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AN    EXAMINATION 


or 


SIE  WILLIAM  HAMILTON'S  PHILOSOPHY, 


J.  PETER  MAYER 
LIBRARY 


AN  EXAMINATION 


SIR  WILLIAM  HAMILTON'S 
PHILOSOPHY 


AND  or 


THE  PRINCIPAL  PHILOSOPHICAL  QUESTIONS 
DISCUSSED   IN  HIS  WRITINGS 


JOHN  STUAET  MILL 


FIFTH    EDITION 


LONDON 

LONGMANS,  GREEN,  READER,  AND  DYER. 

1878 


LONDON  : 

SATILIi^    XDVARD3   AND   CO.,    PRINTERS,   CUANDOS   SXRKBI, 

OOTENT   OARDEN. 


JUXUUAK  I 

UNIVEIIST    V  C  F  CALIFORNIA 
SANTA  BARBARA 


PREFACE 


THE    THIRD    EDITION. 


In  former  writings  I  have  perhaps  seemed  to  go  in 
search  of  objectors,  whom  I  might  have  disregarded,  but 
who  enabled  me  to  bring  out  my  opinions  into  greater 
clearness  and  relief.  My  present  condition  is  far  different; 
for  a  host  of  writers,  whose  mode  of  philosophic  thought 
was  either  directly  or  indirectly  implicated  in  the 
criticisms  made  by  this  volume  on  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
have  taken  up  arms  against  it,  and  fought  -dspro  aris  et 
focis.  Among  these  are  included,  not  solely  friends  or 
followers  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  who  were  under  some 
obligation  to  say  whatever  could  fairly  be  said  in  his 
defence,  but  many  who  stand  almost  as  widely  apart 
from  him  as  I  do,  though  mostly  on  the  reverse  side. 
To  leave  these  attacks  unanswered,  would  be  to  desert 
the  principles  which  as  a  speculative  thinker  I  have 
maintained  all  my  life,  and  which  the  progress  of  my 
thoughts  has  constantly  strengthened.  The  criticisms 
which  have  come  under  my  notice  (omitting  the  daily 
and  weekly  journals)  are  the  following;  there  may  be 
others : 

Mr.  Mansel :  "  The  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned  ; 
comprising  some  remarks  on  Sir  William  Hamilton's 
Philosophy,  and  on  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill's  Examination  of  that 


VI  PREFACE. 

Philosophy."     (First  published  in  Nos.  1  and  2  of  the 
Contemporary  Review.) 

"  The  Battle  of  the  Two  Philosophies ;  by  an  In- 
quirer." 

Dr.  M'Cosh  :  "  An  Examination  of  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill's 
Philosophy,  being  a  Defence  of  Fundamental  Truth." 

Dr.  Calderwood  :  "  The  Sensational  Philosophy — Mr. 
J.  S.  Mill  and  Dr.  M'Cosh;"  in  the  British  and 
Foreign  Evangelical  Review  for  April  1866. 

Dr.  Henry  B.  Smith  :  "  Mill  v.  Hamilton/'  in  the 
American  Presbyterian  and  Theological  Review  for 
January  1866. 

Mr.  H.  F.  O'Hanlon  :  "  A  Criticism  of  John  Stuart 
Mill's  Pure  Idealism  ;  and  an  Attempt  to  show  that,  if 
logically  carried  out,  it  is  Pure  Nihilism." 

Review  of  this  work  in  Blackwood's  Magazine  lor 
January  1866. 

(The  two  last  mentioned  are  confined  to  the  doctrine 
of  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation). 

Mr.  J.  P.  Mahaffy,  in  the  Introduction  to  his  transla- 
tion of  Professor  Kuno  Fischer's  account  of  Kant's 
Kritik.  (Confined  to  the  doctrine  of  Permanent 
Possibilities,  and  the  subject  of  Necessary  Truths.) 

Mr.  Patrick  Proctor  Alexander  :  "  An  Examination  of 
Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill's  Doctrine  of  Causation  in  Relation 
to  Moral  Freedom ;"  forming  the  greater  part  of  a  volume 
entitled  "  Mill  and  Carlyle." 

Reviews  of  this  work  in  the  Dublin  Review  for  October 
1865  (with  the  signature  R.  E.  G.),  and  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review  for  July  1866. 

And,  earlier  than  all  these,  the  able  and  interesting 
volume  of  my  friend  Professor  Masson,  entitled  "  Recent 
British  Philosophy:  a  Review,  with  Criticisms;  including 
some  comments  on  Mr.  Mill's  Answer  to  Sir  William 
Hamilton." 


PREFACE.  Vll 

All  these,  in  regard  to  such  of  the  main  questions  as 
they  severally  discuss,  are  unqualifiedly  hostile  ;  though 
some  of  the  writers  are,  in  a  personal  point  of  view, 
most  courteous,  and  even  over-complimentary ;  and  the 
last  eminently  friendly  as  well  as  flattering. 

The  following  are  only  partially  adverse: 

Review  of  the  present  work  in  the  North  British 
Review  for  September  1865,  attributed  to  Professor 
Fraser,  and  bearing  the  strongest  internal  marks  of  that 
origin.  This  able  thinker,  though  he  considers  me  to 
have  often  misunderstood  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  is,  on  the 
substantive  philosophic  doctrines  principally  concerned, 
a  most  valuable  ally ;  to  whom  I  might  almost  have 
left  the  defence  of  our  common  opinions. 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer :  "  Mill  v.  Hamilton— The  Test 
of  Truth;"  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  for  July  15, 
1865. 

Review  of  the  present  work  in  the  North  American 
Review  for  July  1866. 

The  only  important  criticism,  in  all  essentials  favour- 
able, to  which  I  am  able  to  refer,  is  that  in  the  West- 
minster Review  for  January  1866,  by  an  illustrious  his- 
torian and  philosopher,  who,  of  all  men  now  living,  is 
the  one  by  whom  I  should  most  wish  that  any  writing 
of  mine,  on  a  subject  in  speculative  philosophy,  should 
be  approved.  There  have  also  been  published  since  the 
first  edition  of  the  present  work,  two  remarkable  books, 
which,  if  they  do  not  give  me  direct  support,  effect  a 
powerful  diversion  in  my  favour.  One  is  Mr.  Bolton's 
"  Inquisitio  Philosophica ;  an  Examination  of  the  Prin- 
ciples of  Kant  and  Hamilton  ;"  which,  along  with  much 
other  valuable  matter,  contains  a  vigorous  assault  upon 
my  most  conspicuous  assailant,  Mr.  Mansel.  The  other 
is  Mr.  Stirling's  "Sir  William  Hamilton,  being  the 
Philosophy  of  Perception ;   an  Analysis  :"   an  able   and 


VlU  PREPACI!- 

most  ;»vere  criticism  on  Sir  "W.  Hamilton's  inconsis- 
tencies, and  on  his  general  character  as  a  philosopher, 
taken  from  a  different  point  of  view  from  mine,  and 
expressed  with  far  greater  asperity  than  I  should  myself 
think  justifiable ;  legitimated,  no  doubt,  to  the  writer's 
mind  by  "  a  certain  vein  of  disingenuousness"  which  he 
finds  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  but  which  I  have  not  found, 
and  shall  not  believe  until  I  see  it  proved. 

I  must  have  been  quite  incapable  of  profiting  by  cri- 
ticism, if  I  had  learnt  nothing  from  assailants  so  nume- 
rous, all  of  more  or  less,  and  some  of  very  considerable, 
ability.  They  have  detected  not  a  few  inadvertences  of 
expression,  as  well  as  some  of  thought :  and  partly  by 
their  help,  partly  without  it,  I  have  discovered  others. 
They  have  not  shaken  any  statement  or  opinion  of  real 
moment]  but  I  am  sincerely  indebted  to  them,  both  for 
the  errors  they  have  corrected,  and  for  compelling  me  to 
strengthen  my  defences.  The  point  in  which  it  was  to 
be  expected  that  they  would  oftenest  prevail,  was  in 
showing  me  to  have  erroneously  interpreted  Sir  W. 
Hamilton.  The  difficulty  to  any  thinker  is  so  great,  in 
these  high  regions  of  speculation,  of  placing  himself  com- 
pletely at  the  point  of  view  of  a  different  philosophy, 
and  even  of  thoroughly  understanding  its  language,  that 
it  would  be  very  presumptuous  in  me  to  imagine  that 
I  had  always  overcome  that  difficulty ;  and  that  too  with 
the  warning  before  me,  of  the  absolute  failure  of  able 
and  accomplished  minds  on  the  other  side  in  philosophy, 
to  accomplish  this  in  regard  to  the  modes  of  thinking 
with  which  I  am  most  familiar.  I  have  been  surprised, 
therefore,  to  find  in  how  few  instances,  and  those  how 
little  important,  the  defenders  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  have 
been  able  to  show  that  I  have  misunderstood  or  incor- 
rectly stated  his  opinions  or  arguments.  I  cannot  doubt 
that  more  such  mistakes  remain  to  be  pointed  out :  and 


PREFACE.  IX 

I  regret  that  tlie  greater  part  of  the  volume  has  not  yet, 
in  its  relation  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  had  the  benefit  of  a 
sufficiently  minute  scrutiny.  Had  the  unsparing  criti- 
cism of  Mr.  Mansel  on  the  first  few  chapters  been  con- 
tinued to  the  remainder,  he  would  doubtless  have  pointed 
out  real  mistakes ;  he  might  perhaps  have  thrown  light 
on  some  of  the  topics  from  his  own  thoughts ;  and  I 
should  at  least  have  had  to  thank  him  for  additional  confi- 
dence in  the  statements  and  opinions  which  had  passed 
unharmed  through  the  ordeal  of  his  attacks. 

Where  criticism  or  reconsideration  has  convinced  me 
that  anything  in  the  book  was  erroneous,  or  that  any 
improvement  was  required  in  the  mode  of  stating  and 
setting  forth  the  truth,  I  have  made  the  requisite 
alterations.  When  the  case  seemed  to  require  that  I 
should  call  the  reader's  attention  to  the  change,  I  have 
done  so ;  but  I  have  not  made  this  an  invariable  rule. 
Mere  answers  to  objectors  I  have  generally  relegated  to 
notes.  With  so  many  volumes  to  deal  with,  I  could 
not  take  express  notice  of  every  criticism  which  they 
contained.  When  any  of  my  critics  finds  that  he,  or 
some  of  his  objections,  are  not  individually  referred  to, 
let  him  be  assured  that  it  is  from  no  disrespect,  but 
either  because  I  consider  them  to  have  been  answered 
by  the  reply  made  to  some  one  else,  or  because  their 
best  confutation  is  to  remand  the  objector  to  the  work 
itself,  or  because  the  edge  of  the  objection  has  been 
turned  by  some,  perhaps  qoite  unapparent,  correction  of 
the  text.  A  slight  modification  in  a  sentence,  or  even 
in  a  phrase,  which  a  person  acquainted  with  the  former 
editions  might  read  without  observing  it,  and  of  which, 
even  if  he  observed  it,  he  would  most  likely  not  perceive 
the  purpose,  has  sometimes  effaced  many  pages  of  hostile 
criticism. 


PREFACE. 


Of  the  assailants  to  whom  I  replied,  two  only  have 
published  a  rejoinder;  Dean  Mansel,  in  the  Contemporary 
Eeview for  September  1867, and  Dr.M'Cosh,in  the  British 
and  Foreign  Evangelical  Eeview  for  April  1868.  Neither 
of  them  appears  to  me  to  have  added  much  of  value  to  what 
he  had  previously  advanced  ;  and  so  far  as  concerns  Dean 
Mansel,  his  regretted  death  has  put  a  final  termination 
to  the  controversy  between  us.  I  am  not,  however, 
thereby  exempted  from  taking  notice,  however  briefly, 
of  such  points  in  his  rejoinder  as  appear  to  require  it. 
Dr.  M'Cosh  seems  to  think  it  a  great  triumph  of  his 
assaults  upon  me,  that  many  of  them  were  not  noticed 
in  my  rej)lies  to  critics.  It  is  a  little  unreasonable  in 
Dr.  M'Cosh  to  suppose  that  in  a  work,  the  subject  of 
which  is  the  philosophy  of  Sir  William  Hamilton,  I  was 
bound  to  fight  a  pitched  battle  with  Dr.  M'Cosh  on  the 
whole  line.  His  book  was  an  attack  directed  against 
the  whole  of  my  philosophical  opinions.  I  answered 
such  parts  of  it  as  had  reference  to  the  present  work, 
when  they  seemed  to  require  an  answer,  and  not  to  have 
received  it  sufficiently  in  what  I  had  already  written. 
And  I  have  done  the  same,  in  the  present  edition,  with 
his  rejoinder. 

Besides  several  unpublished  criticisms  which  I  owe  to 
the  kindness  of  correspondence,  and  which  have  helped 
me  to  correct  or  otherwise  improve  some  of  the  details  of 
the  work;  two  more  attacks  have  been  made  upon  it 
subsequently  to  the  third  edition.  Professor  Veitch,  in 
the  Appendices  to  his  interesting  Memoir  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  has  commented  sharply  on  what  I  have  said 
respecting  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  mode  of  understanding 
the  Eelativity  of  human  knowledge,  and  respecting  his 
failure  to  apprehend  correctly  the  general  character  of 
Hume  and  Leibnitz  as  philosophers,  as  well  as  some  par- 
ticular passages  of  Aristotle.    On  the  first  subject,  that 


PREFACE.  XI 

of  Relativity,  I  find  so  much  difficulty  in  reducing  Pro- 
fessor Veitch's  statement  to  distinct  propositions,  and,  so 
far  as  I  understand  his  meaning,  it  differs  so  little,  and 
that  little  not  to  its  advantage,  from  what  I  have  already 
commented  on  in  answering  Mr.  Mansel,  that  I  do  not 
think  it  necessary  to  burthen  this  volume  with  an  express 
reply  to  him.  With  regard  to  Hum6  and  Leibnitz  I  am 
content  that  they  who  have  a  competent  knowledge  of 
those  philosophers  should  form  their  own  opinion.  As 
regards  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  interpretation  of  Aristotle, 
Professor  Veitch  has  convicted  me  of  a  mistake  in  treat- 
ing a  citation  made  by  his  editors  as  if  it  had  been  made 
by  himself,  and  of  an  overstatement  of  one  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  opinions  which  I  only  noticed  incidentally. 
These  errors  I  have  corrected,  in  their  places,  and  it  will 
be  found  that  they  do  not  affect  anything  of  importance 
in  the  criticism  there  made  upon  Sir  W.  Hamilton. 

Professor  Veitch*  considers  it  unfair  that  1  should 
press  against  Sir  W.  Hamilton  anything  contained  in 
his  Lectures,  these  having  been  hastily  written  under 
pressure  from  time,  and  not  being  the  most  matured 
expression  of  some  of  his  opinions.  But  though  thus 
written,  it  is  admitted  that  they  continued  to  be 
delivered  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  as  long  as  he  performed 
the  duties  of  Professor ;  which  would  not  have  been  the 
case  if  he  had  no  longer  considered  them  as  a  fair  repre- 
sentation of  his  philosophy.  A  complete  representation 
I  never  pretended  that  they  were;  a  correct  representation 
I  am  bound  to  think  them ;  for  it  cannot  be  believed 
that  he  would  have  gone  on  delivering  to  his  pupils 
matter  which  he  judged  to  be  inconsistent  with  the 
subsequent  developments  of  his  philosophy. 

The  other  thinker  who  has  taken  the  field  against  my 
psychological  opinions  is  Dr.   Ward,  who,  in  the  Dublin 

*  Memoir  of  Sir  WiUiam  Hamilton,  pp.  212,  213. 


Xll  PREFACE. 

Review  for  October  1871,  has  made  an  able  attack  on 
the  views  I  have  expressed  in  this  and  other  writings  on 
the  subject  of  what  is  called  Necessary  Truth.  Sorae  of 
Dr.  Ward's  observations  are  more  particularly  directed 
against  a  portion  of  my  System  of  Logic,  and  the  fittest 
place  for  their  discussion  is  in  connexion  with  that 
treatise.  But  the  greater  part  of  his  article  principally 
regards  the  chapter  of  the  present  work  which  relates  to 
Inseparable  Association,  and  a  reply  to  it  will  be  found 
in  a  note  which  I  have  added  at  the  end  of  that  chapter. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

IHTRODUCTORY   REMARKS 1 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  RELATIVITT   OF  HUMAN   KNOWLEDGE 5 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE   DOCTRINE  OF  THE   RELATIVITT  OF  HUMAN   KNOWLEDGE,  AS   HELD 

BY  SIR  WILLIAM  HAMILTON 17 

CHAPTER  IV. 

IN    WHAT    RESPECT    SIR    WILLIAM     HAMILTON     REALLY     DIFFERS     FROM 

THE  PHILOSOPHERS   OF  THE   ABSOLUTE 45 

CHAPTER  V. 

WHAT     IS     REJECTED    AS     KNOWLEDGE     BY     SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON, 

BROUGHT   BACK   UNDER   THE   NAME   OF   BELIEF 74 

I 

CHAPTER  VI. 

THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   THE   CONDITIONED .      82 


^ 


XIV  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

TLBM 
THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    CONDITIONED,  AS  APPLIED    BY   MR.  MANSEL 

TO    THE    LIMITS    OF    RELIGIOUS   THOUGHT Ill 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

OF    CONSCIOUSNESS,   AS    UNDERSTOOD    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON         .       136 

CHAPTER  IX.  ' 

ON    THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS 157 

CHAPTER  X. 
SIR    WILLIAM    Hamilton's    view    of    the    different    theories 

RESPECTmO   the    BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL    WORLD         ....       187 

CHAPTER  XL  3 

THE     PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY     OF     THE     BELIEF     IN     AN     EXTERNAL 

WORLD 225 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE     PSYCHOLOGICAL     THEORY     OF     THE     BELIEF     IN    MATTER,     HOW 

FAR   APPLICABLE    TO    MIND 240 

APPENDIX    TO    THE   TWO    PRECEDING    CHAPTERS     .......      250 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE      PSYCHOLOGICAL     THEORY     OF     THE      PRIMARY     QUALITIES      OF 

MATTER         . 265 

CHAPTER  XIV.  ^  H    j 

HOW    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AND    MR.    MANSEL    DISPOSE    OF    THE 

LAW   OF    INSEPARABLE   ASSOCIATION 314 


CONTENTS.  XV 

CHAPTER  XV. 

PA61 

SIB    WILLIAM    Hamilton's    doctrine    of    unconscious    mental 

MODIFICATIONS 341 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  theory  of  causation 359 


CHAPTER  XVII.                  ** 
the  doctrine  of  concepts,  or  general  notions 380 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 
of  judgment 414 

CHAPTER  XIX. 
OF  reasoning 438 

CHAPTER  XX. 

ON    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON'S   CONCEPTION    OF    LOGIC   AS   A    SCIENCE. 

IS  LOGIC   THE   SCIENCE    OF   THE    LAWS   OR   FORMS   OF   THOUGHT?      446 

CHAPTER  XXI. 

THE    FUNDAMENTAL    LAWS    OF   THOUGHT  ACCORDING   TO    SIR   WILLIAM 

HAMILTON 479 

CHAPTER  XXII.  L- 

OF    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON'S    SUPPOSED    IMPROVEMENTS     IN    FORMAL 

LOGIC 496 

CHAPTER  XXni.  ' 

of    some    minor   peculiarities    of    doctrine    in    sir    william 

Hamilton's  view  of  formal  logic 521 


XVI  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

ri.ai 
OF     SOME    NATURAL     PREJUDICES     COUNTENANCED     BY     SIR     WILLIAM 
HAMILTON,     AND     SOME     FALLACIES    WHICH     HE     CONSIDERS     IN- 
SOLUBLE  539 

CHAPTER  XXV. 
SIS  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  theort  of  pleasure  and  pain  .     .     .     553 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

ON   THE   FREEDOM   OF   THE   WILL 561 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 

SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions  on  the    studt   of  mathe- 
matics   591 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 
concluding  remarks 617 


AN  EXAMINATION 


or 


SIR  WILLIAM  HAMILTON'S  PHILOSOPHY. 


CHAPTEE  I. 


INTRODUCTORY    REMARKS. 


Among  the  philosophical  writers  of  the  present  century 
in  these  islands,  no  one  occupies  a  higher  position  than 
Sir  William  Hamilton.  He  alone,  of  our  metaphysicians 
of  this  and  the  preceding  generation,  has  acquired,  merely 
as  such,  an  European  celebrity :  while,  in  our  own 
country,  he  has  not  only  had  power  to  produce  a  revival 
of  interest  in  a  study  which  had  ceased  to  be  popular, 
but  has  made  himself,  in  some  sense,  the  founder  of  a 
school  of  thought.  The  school,  indeed,  is  not  essentially 
new ;  for  its  fundamental  doctrines  are  those  of  the  philo- 
sophy which  has  everywhere  been  in  the  ascendant  since 
the  setting  in  of  the  reaction  against  Locke  and  Hume, 
which  dates  from  Reid  among  ourselves  and  from  Kant 
for  the  rest  of  Europe.  But  that  general  scheme  of 
philosophy  is  split  into  many  divisions,  and  the  Hamil- 
tonian  form  of  it  is  distinguished  by  as  marked  pecu- 
liarities as  belong  to  any  other  of  its  acknowledged 
varieties.  From  the  later  German  and  French  develop- 
ments of  the  common  doctrine,  it  is  separated  by  dif- 
ferences great  in  reality,  and  still  greater  in  appearance ; 
while  it  stands  superior  to  the  earlier  Scottish  and  Eng- 
lish forms  by  the  whole  difference  of  level  which  has 

\6 


Z  INTRODUCTORY    REMARKS. 

been  gained  to  philosophy  through  the  powerful  nega- 
tive criticism  of  Kant.  It  thus  unites  to  the  prestige  of 
independent  originality,  the  recommendation  of  a  general 
harmony  with  the  prevailing  tone  of  thought.  These 
advantages,  combined  with  an  intellect  highly  trained 
and  in  many  respects  highly  fitted  for  the  subject,  and  a 
knowledge  probably  never  equalled  in  extent  and  accu- 
racy of  whatever  had  been  previously  thought  and 
written  in  his  department,  have  caused  Sir  William 
Hamilton  to  be  justly  recognised  as,  in  the  province 
of  abstract  speculation,  one  of  the  important  figures  of 
the  age. 

The  acknowledged  position  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  at  the 
head,  so  far  as  regards  this  country,  of  the  school  of 
philosophy  to  which  he  belongs,  has  principally  deter- 
mined me  to  connect  with  his  nan\e  and  writings  the 
speculations  and  criticisms  contained  in  the  present 
work.  The  justification  of  the  work  itself  lies  in  the 
importance  of  the  questions,  to  the  discussion  of  which 
it  is  a  contribution.  England  is  often  reproached  by 
Continental  thinkers,  with  indifference  to  the  higher 
philosophy.  But  England  did  not  always  deserve  this 
reproach,  and  is  already  showing,  by  no  doubtful  symp- 
toms, that  she  will  not  deserve  it  much  longer.  Her 
thinkers  are  again  beginning  to  see,  what  they  had 
only  temporarily  forgotten,  that  a  true  Psychology  is 
the  indispensable  scientific  basis  of  Morals,  of  Politics,  of 
the  science  and  art  of  Education ;  that  the  difficulties  of 
Metaphysics  lie  at  the  root  of  all  science ;  that  those  diffi- 
culties can  only  be  quieted  by  being  resolved,  and  that 
until  they  are  resolved,  positively  whenever  possible,  but 
at  any  rate  negatively,  we  are  never  assured  that  any 
human  knowledge,  even  physical,  stands  on  solid  foun- 
dations. 

My  subject,  therefore,  is  less  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  than 
the  questions  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  discussed.  It  is, 
however,  impossible  to  write  on  those  questions  in  our 
own  country  and  in  our  own  time,  without  incessant 
reference,  express  or  tacit,  to  his  treatment  of  them.    On 


INTRODUCTORY    REMARKS.  8 

all  the  subjects  on  which  he  touched,  he  is  either  one  of 
the  most  powerful  allies  of  what  I  deem  a  sound  philo- 
sophy, or  (more  frequently)  by  far  its  most  formidable 
antagonist ;  both  because  he  came  the  latest,  and  wrote 
with  a  full  knowledge  of  the  flaws  which  had  been  de- 
tected in  his  predecessors,  and  because  he  was  one  of  the 
ablest,  the  most  far-sighted,  and  the  most  candid. 
Whenever  any  opinion  which  he  deliberately  expressed, 
is  contended  against,  his  form  of  the  opinion,  and  his 
arguments  for  it,  are  those  which  especially  require  to  be 
faced  and  carefully  appreciated :  and  it  being  thus  im- 
possible that  any  fit  discussion  of  his  topics  should  not 
involve  an  estimate  of  his  doctrines,  it  seems  worth  while 
that  the  estimate  should  be  rendered  as  complete  as 
practicable,  by  being  extended  to  all  the  subjects  on 
which  he  has  made,  or  on  which  he  is  believed  to  have 
made,  any  important  contribution  to  thought. 

In  thus  attempting  to  anticipate,  as  faras  is  yet  possible, 
the  judgment  of  posterity  on  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  labours, 
I  sincerely  lament  that  on  the  many  points  on  which  I 
am  at  issue  with  him,  I  have  the  unfair  advantage  pos- 
sessed by  one  whose  opponent  is  no  longer  in  a  condition 
to  reply.  Personally  I  might  have  had  small  cause  to 
congratulate  myself  on  the  reply  which  I  might  have 
received,  for  though  a  strictly  honourable,  he  was  a 
most  unsparing  controversialist,  and  whoever  assailed 
even  the  most  unimportant  of  his  opinions,  might  look 
for  hard  blows  in  return.  But  it  would  have  been  worth 
far  more,  even  to  myself,  than  any  polemical  success,  to 
have  known  with  certainty  in  what  manner  he  would 
have  met  the  objections  raised  in  the  present  volume.  T 
feel  keenly,  with  Plato,  how  much  more  is  to  be  learnt 
by  discussing  with  a  man,  who  can  question  and  answer, 
than  with  a  book,  which  cannot.  But  it  was  not  possible 
to  take  a  general  review  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  doctrines 
while  they  were  only  known  to  the  world  in  the  frag- 
mentary state  in  which  they  were  published  during  his 
life.  His  Lectures,  the  fullest  and  the  only  consecutive 
exposition  (as  far  as  it  goes)  of  his  philosophy,  are  a 

B  2 


4  INTRODUCTORY    REMARKS. 

posthumous  publication;  while  the  latest  and  most 
matured  expression  of  many  of  his  opinions,  the  Disser- 
tations on  Reid,  left  off,  scarcely  half  finished,  in  the 
middle  of  a  sentence ;  and  so  long  as  he  lived,  his  readers 
were  still  hoping  for  the  remainder.  The  Lectures,  it  is 
true,  have  added  less  than  might  have  been  expected  to 
the  knowledge  we  already  possessed  of  the  author's  doc- 
trines ;  but  it  is  something  to  know  that  we  have  now 
all  that  is  to  be  had ;  and  though  we  should  have  been 
glad  to  have  his  opinions  on  more  subjects,  we  could 
scarcely  have  known  more  thoroughly  than  we  are  now 
at  last  enabled  to  do,  what  his  thoughts  were  on  the 
points  to  which  he  attached  the  greatest  importance, 
and  which  are  most  identified  with  his  name  and  fame. 


CHAPTEE  II. 


THE   BELATIVITT  OF  HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE. 

The  doctrine  which  is  thought  to  belong  in  the  most 
especial  manner  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  and  which  was  the 
ground  of  his  opposition  to  the  transcendentalism  of  the 
later  French  and  German  metaphysicians,  is  that  which 
he  and  others  have  called  the  Relativity  of  Human 
Knowledge.  It  is  the  subject  of  the  most  generally 
known,  and  most  impressive,  of  all  his  writings,  the  one 
which  first  revealed  to  the  English  metaphysical  reader 
that  a  new  power  had  arisen  in  philosophy ;  and,  together 
with  its  developments,  it  composes  the  "  Philosophy  of 
the  Conditioned,"  which  he  opposed  to  the  German  and 
French  philosophies  of  the  Absolute,  and  which  is  re- 
garded by  most  of  his  admirers  as  the  greatest  of  his 
titles  to  a  permanent  place  in  the  history  of  metaphy- 
sical thought. 

But  the  "  relativity  of  human  knowledge,"  like  most 
other  phrases  into  which  the  words  relative  or  relation 
enter,  is  vague,  and  admits  of  a  great  variety  of  meanings. 
In  one  of  its  senses,  it  stands  for  a  proposition  respecting 
the  nature  and  limits  of  our  knowledge,  in  my  judgment 
true,  fundamental,  and  lull  of  important  consequences 
in  philosophy.  From  this  amplitude  of  meaning  its 
significance  shades  down  through  a  number  of  gradations, 
successively  more  thin  and  unsubstantial,  till  it  fades 
into  a  truism  leading  to  no  consequences,  and  hardly 
worth  enunciating  in  words.  When,  therefore,  a  philo- 
sopher lays  great  stress  upon  the  relativity  of  our  know- 
ledge, it  is  necessary  to  cross-examine  his  writings,  and 
compel  them  to  disclose  in  which  of  its  many  degrees  of 
meaning  he  understands  the  phrase. 


THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE. 


There  is  one  oT  its  acceptations,  whicli,  for  the  pur- 
pose now  in  view,  may  be  put  aside,  though  in  itself 
defensible,  and  though,  when  thus  employed,  it  expresses 
a  real  and  important  law  of  our  mental  nature.  This  is, 
that  we  only  know  anything,  by  knowing  it  as  distin- 
guished from  something  else ;  that  all  consciousness  is 
of  difference ;  that  two  objects  are  the  smallest  number 
required  to  constitute  consciousness ;  that  a  thing  is  only 
seen  to  be  what  it  is,  by  contrast  with  what  it  is  not.  The 
employment  of  the  proposition,  that  all  human  knowledge 
is  relative,  to  express  this  meaning,  is  sanctioned  by  high 
authorities,*  and  I  have  no  fault  to  find  with  that  use 
of  the  phrase.  But  we  are  not  concerned  with  it  in 
the  present  case ;  for  it  is  not  in  this  sense,  that  the 
expression  is  ordinarily  or  intentionally  used  by  Sir  W. 
Hamilton ;  though  he  fully  recognises  the  truth  which, 
when  thus  used,  it  serves  to  express.  In  general,  when 
he  says  that  all  our  knowledge  is  relative,  the  relation 
he  has  in  view  is  not  between  the  thing  known  and 
other  objects  compared  with  it,  but  between  the  thing 
known  and  the  mind  knowing. 

All  language  recognises  a  distinction  between  myself — 
the  Ego — and  a  world,  either  material,  or  spiritual,  or  both, 
external  to  me,  but  of  which  I  can,  in  some  mode  and 
measure,  take  cognizance.  The  most  fundamental  ques- 
tions in  philosophy  are  those  which  seek  to  determine 
what  we  are  able  to  know  of  these  external  objects,  and 
by  what  evidence  we  know  it. 

In  examining  the  different  opinions  which  are  or  may 
be  entertained  on  this  subject,  it  will  simplify  the  ex- 
position very  much,  if  we  at  first  limit  ourselves  to  the 
case  of  physical,  or  what  are  commonly  called  material 
objects.  These  objects  are  of  course  known  to  us  through 
the  senses.  By  those  channels  and  no  otherwise  do  we 
learn  whatever  we  do  learn  concerning  them.  Without 
the  senses  we  should  not  know  nor  suspect  that  such  things 
existed.     We  know  no  more  of  what  they  are,  than  the 

*  In  particular  by  Mr.  Bain,  who  habitually  uses  the  phrase  "  relativity 
of  knowledge"  in  this  sense. 


THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE.  7 

senses  tell  us,  nor  does  nature  afford  us  any  means  of 
knowing  more.  Tlius  much,  in  the  obvious  meaning  of 
the  terms,  is  denied  by  no  one,  though  there  are  thinkers 
who  prefer  to  express  the  meaning  in  other  language. 

There  are,  however,  conflicting  opinions  as  to  wJiat  it 
is  that  the  senses  tell  us  concerning  objects.  About  one 
part  of  the  information  they  give,  there  is  no  dispute. 
They  tell  us  our  sensations.  The  objects  excite,  or 
awaken  in  us,  certain  states  of  feeling.  A  part,  at  least, 
of  what  we  know  of  the  objects,  is  the  feelings  to  which 
they  give  rise.  What  we  term  the  properties  of  an  i 
object,  are  the  powers  it  exerts  of  producing  sensations 
in  our  consciousness.  Take  any  familiar  object,  such  as 
an  orange.  It  is  yellow ;  that  is,  it  affects  us,  through 
our  sense  of  sight,  with  a  particular  sensation  of  colour. 
It  is  soft ;  in  other  words  it  produces  a  sensation,  through 
our  muscular  feelings,  of  resistance  overcome  by  a  slight 
effort.  It  is  sweet;  for  it  causes  a  peculiar  kind  of 
pleasurable  sensation  through  our  organ  of  taste.  It  i» 
of  a  globular  figure,  somewhat  flattened  at  the  ends :  we 
affirm  this  on  account  of  sensations  that  it  causes  in  us, 
respecting  which  it  is  still  in  dispute  among  psycholo- 
gists whether  they  originally  came  to  us  solely  through 
touch  and  the  muscles,  or  also  through  the  organ  of 
sight.  When  it  is  cut  open,  we  discover  a  certain  ar- 
rangement of  parts,  distinguishable  as  being,  in  certain 
respects,  unlike  one  another ;  but  of  their  unlikeness  we 
have  no  measure  or  proof  except  that  they  give  us  dif- 
ferent sensations.  The  rind,  the  pulp,  the  juice,  difl'er 
from  one  another  in  colour,  in  taste,  in  small,  in  degree 
of  consistency  (that  is,  of  resistance  to  pressure)  all  of 
which  are  diflerences  in  our  feelings.  The  parts  are, 
moreover,  outside  one  another,  occupying  difi'ereut  por- 
tions of  space :  and  even  this  distinction,  it  is  maintained 
(though  the  doctrine  is  vehemently  protested  against  by 
some)  may  be  resolved  into  a  diflerencein  our  sensations. 
When  thus  analysed,  it  is  affirmed  that  all  the  attributes 
which  we  ascribe  to  objects,  consist  in  their  having  the 
power  of  exciting  one  or  another  variety  of  seuijation  in. 


8 


THE    RELATIVITY   OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE. 


»     I 


t\f^ 


> 


our  rnind ;  that  to  ns  the  properties  of  an  object  have 
this  and  no  other  meaning ;  that  an  object  is  to  us  no- 
thing else  than  that  which  affects  our  senses  in  a  certain 
manner  ;  that  we  are  incapable  of  attaching  to  the  word 
object,  any  other  meaning;  that  even  an  imaginary  oV- 
ject  is  but  a  conception,  such  as  we  are  able  to  form,  of 
something  which  would  affect  our  senses  in  some  new 
way;  so  that  our  knowledge  of  objects,,  and  even  our 
fancies  about  objects,  consist  of  nothing  but  the  sensa- 
tions which  they  excite,  or  which  we  imagine  them  ex- 
citing in  ourselves. 

This  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Relativity  of  Knowledge 
to  the  knowing  mind,  in  the  simplest,  purest,  and,  as  I 
think,  the  most  proper  acceptation  of  the  words.  There 
are,  however,  two  forms  of  this  doctrine,  which  differ 
materially  from  one  another. 

According  to  one  of  the  forms,  the  sensations  which, 
in  common  parlance,  we  are  said  to  receive  from  objects, 
are  not  only  all  that  we  can  possibly  know  of  the  objects, 
but  are  all  that  we  have  any  ground  for  believing  to 
exist.  What  we  term  an  object  is  but  a  complex  con- 
ception made  np  by  the  laws  of  association,  out  of  the 
ideas  of  various  sensations  which  we  are  accustomed  to 
receive  simultaneously.  There  is  nothing  real  in  the 
process  but  these  sensations.  They  do  not,  indeed,  ac- 
company or  succeed  one  another  at  random ;  they  are 
held  together  by  a  law,  that  is,  they  occur  in  fixed  groups, 
and  a  fixed  order  of  succession  :  but  we  have  no  evidence 
of  anything  which,  not  being  itself  a  sensation,  is  a  sub- 
stratum or  hidden  cause  of  sensations.  The  idea  of  sucli 
a  substratum  is  a  purely  mental  creation,  to  which  we 
have  no  reason  to  think  that  there  is  any  corresponding 
reality  exterior  to  our  minds.  Those  who  hold  this 
opinion  are  said  to  doubt  or  deny  the  existence  of  matter. 
They  are  sometimes  called  by  the  name  Idealists,  some- 
times by  that  of  Sceptics,  according  to  the  other  opinions 
which  they  hold.  They  include  the  followers  of  Berkeley 
and  those  of  Hume.  Among  recent  thinkers,  the  acute 
and  accomplished  Professor  Ferrier,  though  by  a  circuitous 


THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE.  9 

path,  and  expressing  himself  in  a  very  different  phrase-    • 
ology,  seems  to  have    arrived    at   essentially  the  same 
point  of  view.     These  philosophers  maintain  the  Rela-  ' 
tivity  of  our  knowledge   in  the  most  extreme  form  in 
which  the  doctrine  can  be  understood,  since  they  con- 
tend, not  merely  that  all  we  can  possibly  know  of  any-  | 
thing  is  the    manner    in  which    it   aifects   the  human 
faculties,  but  that  there  is  nothing  else  to  be  known ; 
that  affections  of  human  or  of  some  other  minds  are  all  \ 
that  we  can  know  to  exist. 

This,  however,  is  far  from  being  the  shape  in  which  't\^- 
the  doctrine  of  the  Relativity  of  our  knowledge  is  usu- 
ally held.  To  most  of  those  who  hold  it,  the  difference 
between  the  Ego  and  the  Non-Ego  is  not  one  of  lan- 
guage only,  nor  a  formal  distinction  between  two  aspects 
of  the  same  reality,  but  denotes  two  realities,  each 
having  a  separate  existence,  and  neither  dependent  on 
the  other.  In  the  phraseology  borrowed  from  the  School- 
men by  the  German  Transcendentalists,  they  regard  the  ; 
Noumenon  as  in  itself  a  different  thing  from  the  Phae-  j 
nomenon,  and  equally  real ;  many  of  them  would  say,  ! 
much  more  real,  being  the  permanent  Reality,  of  which 
the  other  is  but  the  passing  manifestation.  They  be- 
lieve that  there  is  a  real  universe  of  "  Things  in  Them- 
selves," and  that  whenever  there  is  an  impression  on 
our  senses,  there  is  a  "  Thing  in  itself,"  which  is  behind 
the  phaenomenon,  and  is  the  cause  of  it.  But  as  to 
what  this  Thing  is  "in  itsell,"  we,  having  no  organs 
except  our  senses  for  communicating  with  it,  can  only 
know  what  our  senses  tell  us  ;  and  as  they  tell  us  nothing 
but  the  impression  which  the  thing  makes  upon  us,  we 
do  not  know  what  it  is  in  itself  at  all.  We  suppose  (at 
least  these  philosophers  suppose)  that  it  must  be  some- 
thing "  in  itself,"  but  all  that  we  know  it  to  be  is  merely 
relative  to  us,  consisting  in  the  power  of  affecting  us  in 
certain  ways,  or,  as  it  is  technically  called,  of  producing 
Phsenomena.  External  things  exist,  and  haye^  an  in-  ^ 
most  nature,  but  their  inmost  nature  is  inaccessible  to 
our  faculties.     We  know  it  not,  and  can  assert  nothing 


10  THE    RELATIVITY    OF   HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE. 

of  it  with  a  meaning,  Of  the  ultimate  Reahties,  as 
such,  we  know  the  existence,  and  nothing  more.  But 
the  impressions  which  these  Realities  make  on  us — ^he 
sensations  thej  excite,  the  similitudes,  groupings,  and 
successions  of  those  sensations,  or,  to  sum  up  all  this 
in  a  common  though  improper  expression,  the  represen- 
tations generated  in  our  minds  by  the  action  ot  the 
Things  themselves — these  we  may  know,  and  these  are 
all  that  we  can  know  respecting  tliem.  In  some  future 
state  of  existence  it  is  conceivable  that  we  may  know 
more,  and  more  may  be  known  by  intelligences  superior 
to  us.  Yet  even  this  can  only  be  true  in  the  same  sense 
in  which  a  person  with  the  use  of  his  eyes  knows  more 
than  is  known  to  one  born  blind,  or  in  which  we  should 
know  more  than  we  do  if  we  were  endowed  with  two  or 
three  additional  senses.  We  should  have  more  sensa- 
tions ;  phajnomena  would  exist  to  us  of  which  we  have 
at  present  no  conception  ;  and  we  might  know  better 
than  we  now  do,  many  of  those  wliicli  are  within  our 
present  experience;  for  if  the  new  impressions  were 
Imked  with  the  old,  as  the  old  are  with  one  anoiher,  by 
uniformities  of  succession  and  coexistence,  we  should 
now  have  new  marks  indicating  to  us  known  phseno- 
mena  in  cases  in  which  we  should  otherwise  have  been 
unaware  of  them.  But  all  this  additional  knowledge 
would  be,  like  that  which  we  now  possess,  merely  phae- 
nomenal.  We  should  not,  any  more  than  at  present, 
know  things  as  they  are  in  themselves,  but  merely  an 
increased  number  of  relations  between  them  and  us. 
And  in  the  only  meaning  which  we  are  able  to  attach 
to  the  term,  aiijknowiedge,  by  however  exalted  an  In- 
telligence, can  only  be  relative  to  the  knowing  Mind. 
If  Tnmgs  have  an  inmost  nature,  apart  not  only  trom 
!  the  impressions  which  they  produce,  but  from  ail  those 
j  which  they  are  fitted  to  produce,  on  any  sentient  being, 
'  this  inmost  nature  is  unknowable,  inscrutable,  and  in- 
conceivable, not  to  us  merely,  but  to  every  other  crea- 
ture. To  say  that  even  the  Creator  could  know  it,,  is 
\  to  use  language  which  to  us  has  no  meaning,  because 


-% 


THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE,  11 

we  have  no  faculties  by  which  to  apprehend  that  there    I 
is  any  such  thing  for  him  to  know.  ' 

It  is  in  this  form  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Eelativity 
of  Knowledge  is  held  by  the  greater  number  of  those 
who  profess  to  hold  it,  attaching  any  definite  idea  to  the 
term.  These  again  are  divided  into  several  distinct 
schools  of  thinkers,  by  some  of  whom  the  doctrine  is 
held  with  a  modification  of  considerable  importance. 

Agreeing  in  the  opinion  that  what  we  know  of  Nou- 
inena,  or  Things  in  themselves,  is  but  their  bare  exis- 
tence, all  our  other  knowledge  of  Things  being  but  a 
knowledge  of  something  in  ourselves  which  derives  its 
origin  from  them  ;  there  is  a  class  of  thinkers  who  hold 
that  our  mere  sensations,  and  an  outward  cause  which 
produces  them,  do  not  compose  the  whole  of  this  relative 
knowledge.  The  Attributes  which  we  ascribe  to  out- 
ward things,  or  such  at  least  as  are  inseparable  from 
them  in  thought,  contain,  it  is  affirmed,  other  elements, 
over  and  above  sensations  plus  an  unknowable  cause. 
These  additional  elements  are  still  only  relative,  for  they 
are  not  in  the  objects  themselves,  nor  have  we  evidence 
of  anything  in  the  objects  that  answers  to  them.  They 
are  added  by  the  mind  itself,  and  belong,  not  to  the 
Things,  but  to  our  perceptions  and  conceptions  of  them. 
Such  properties  as  the  objects  can  be  conceived  divested 
of,  such  as  sweetness  or  sourness,  hardness  or  softness, 
hotness  or  coldness,  whiteness,  redness,  or  blackness — 
these,  it  is  sometimes  admitted,  exist  in  our  sensations 
only.  But  the  attributes  of  filling  space,  and  occupying  i 
a  portion  of  time,  are  not  properties  of  our  sensations  \ 
in  their  crude  state,  neither,  again,  are  they  properties 
of  the  objects,  nor  is  there  in  the  objects  any  prototype 
of  them.  They  r^ult  irom  the  nature  and  structure  of 
the  Mind  itself :  which  is  so  constituted  that  it  cannot 
take  any  impressions  from  objects  except  in  those  par- 
ticular modes.  We  see  a  thing  in  a  place,  not  because 
the  Noumenon,  the  Thing  in  itself,  is  in  any  place,  but 
because  it  is  the  law  of  our  perceptive  faculty  that  we 
must  see  as  in  some  place,  whatever  we  see  at  ail.  Place 


^ 


12  THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE. 

'is  not  a  property  of  the  Thing,  but  a  mode  in  which  the 
mind  is  compelled  to  represent  it.     Time  and  Space  are 

I  only  modes  of  our  perceptions,  not  modes  of  existence, 
and  higher  Intelligences  are  possibly  not  bound  by 
them.  Things,  in  themselves,  are  neither  in  time  nor 
in  space,  though  we  cannot  represent  them  to  ourselves 
except  under  that  twofold  condition.  Again,  when  we 
predicate  of  a  thing  that  it  is  one  or  many,  a  whole  or  a 
part  of  a  whole,  a  Substance  possessing  Accidents,  or  an 
Accident  inhering  in  a  Substance — when  we  think  of  it 
as  producing  Efiects,  or  as  produced  by  a  Cause,  (I  omit 

1  other  attributes  not  necessary  to  be  here  enumerated,) 
we  are  ascribing  to  it  properties  which  do  not  exist  in 
the  Thing  itself,  but  with  which  it  is  clothed  by  the 
laws  of  our  conceptive  faculty — properties  not  of  the 
'  Things,  but  of  our  mode  of  conceiving  them.  We  are 
compelled  by  our  nature  to  construe  things  to  ourselves 
under  these  forms,  but  they  are  not  forms  of  the  Things. 
The  attributes  exist  only  in  relation  to  us,  and  as  in- 
herent laws  of  the  human  faculties  ;  but  diti'er  from 
Succession  and  Duration  in  being  laws  of  our  intel- 
lectual, not  our  sensitive  faculty;  technically  termed 
Categories  of  the  Understanding.  This  is  the  doctrine 
of  the  Kelativity  of  our  knowledge  as  held  by  Kant, 
who  has  been  followed  in  it  by  many  subsequent 
thinkers,  Grerman,  English,  and  French. 

By  the  side  of  this  there  is  another  philosophy,  older 
in  date,  which,  though  temporarily  eclipsed  and  often 
m\jffContemptuously  treated   by  it,   is,  according  to  present 
Jj^'>  ,  appearances,  likely  to  survive  it.     Taking  the  same  view 
^  with  Kant  of  the  unknowableness  of  Things  in  them- 

selves, and  also  agreeing  with  him  that  we  mentally 
invest  the  objects  of  our  perceptions  with  attributes 
which  do  not  all  point,  like  whiteness  and  sweetness,  to 
specific  sensations,  but  are  in  some  cases  constructed  by 
the  mind's  own  laws ;  this  philosophy,  however,  does 
not  think  it  necessary  to  ascribe  to  the  mind  certain 
innate  forms,  in  which  the  objects  are  (as  it  were) 
moulded  into  these  appearances,  but  holds  that  Place, 
Extension,  Substance,  Cause,  and  the  rest,  are  conceptions 


AVp^^%<V^E    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE.  13 

^(^  put  together  out  of  ideas  of  sensation  by  the  known 
J;,;P*>,^laws  of  association.     This,  the  doctrine  of  Hartley,  of 
^^  James   Mill,    of    Professor   Bain,    and    other   eminent 
thinkers,    and   which   is    compatible    with   either   the 
acceptance  or  the  rejection  of  the  Berkeleian  theory,  is 
the  extreme  form  of  one  mode  of  the  doctrine  of  Relati- 
vity, as  Kant's  is  of  another.     Both  schemes  accept  the 
J^i  doctrine  in  its  widest  sense — the  entire  inaccessibility 
^'    I  to  our  faculties  of  any  other  knowledge  of  Things  than 
)  that  of  the  impressions  which  they  produce  in  our  mental 
1  consciousness. 

Between  these  there  are  many  intermediate  systems, 
according  as  different  thinkers  have  assigned  more  or 
less  to  the  original  furniture  of  the  mind  on  the  one 
hand,  or  to  the  associations  generated  by  experience  on 
the  other.  Brown,  for  example,  regards  our  notion  of 
Space  or  Extension  as  a  product  of  association,  while 
many  of  our  intellectual  ideas  are  regarded  by  him  as 
'  ultimate  and  undecomposable  facts.  But  he  accepts,  in 
its  full  extent,  the  doctrine  of  the  Relativity  of  our 
knowledge,  being  of  opinion  that  though  we  are  assured 
of  the  objective  existence  of  a  world  external  to  the  mind, 
our  knowledge  of  that  world  is  absolutely  limited  to  the 
modes  in  which  we  are  affected  by  it.  The  same 
doctrine  is  very  impressively  taught  by  one  of  the 
acutest  metaphysicians  of  recent  times,  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer,  who,  in  his  "  First  Principles,"  insists  with 
equal  force  upon  the  certainty  of  the  existence  of  Things 
in  Themselves,  and  upon  their  absolute  and  eternal 
relegation  to  the  region  of  the  Unknowable.*  This  is 
also,  apparently,  the  doctrine  of  Auguste  Comte :  though 
while  maintaining  with  great  emphasis  the  unknow- 
ableness  of  Noumena  by  our  faculties,  his  aversion  to 
metaphysics  prevented  him  from  giving  any  definite 
opinion  as  to  their  real  existence,  which,  however,  his 
language  always  by  implication  assumes. 

It  is  obvious  that  what  has  been  said  respecting  the 
unknowableness  of  Things  "  in  themselves,"  forms  no 

*  See,  kowever,  below,  a  note  near  the  end  of  chap,  ix. 


14  THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE. 

obstacle  to  our  ascribing  attributes  or  properties  to  them, 
provided  these  are  always  conceived  as  relative  to  us. 
If  a  thing  produces  effects  of  which  our  sight,  hearing, 
or  touch  can  take  cognizance,  it  follows,  and  indeed  is 
but  the  same  statement  in  other  words,  that  the  thing 
[hdiS^i/^er  to  produce  those  effects.  These  various_powers 
are  its  properties,  and  of  such,  an  indefinite  multitude  is 
open  to  our  knowledge.  But  this  knowledge  is  merely 
pha3nomenal.  The  object  is  known  to  us  only  in  one 
special  relation,  namely, as  that  which  produces,  or  is  capa- 
ble of  producing,  certain  impressions  on  our  senses ;  and 
all  that  we  really  know  is  these  impressions.  This  nega- 
tive meaning  is  all  that  should  be  understood  by  the 
assertion,  that  we  cannot  know  the  Thing  in  itself;  that 
we  cannot  know  its  inmost  nature  or  essence.  The  in^ 
most  nature  or  essence  of  a  Thing  is  apt  to  be  regarded 
as  something  unknown,  which,  if  we  knew  it,  would  ex- 
.  plain  and  account  for  all  the  phsenomena  which  the  thing 
jLt;d^<'f exhibits  to  us.  But  tjiis  unknown  something  is  a  sup- 
position without  evidence.  We  have  no  ground  for 
supposing  that  there  is  anything  which  if  known  to  us 
would  afford  to  our  intellect  this  satisfaction  ;  would 
sum  up,  as  it  were,  the  knowable  attributes  of  the  object 
in  a  single  sentence.  Moreover,  if  there  were  such  a 
central  property,  it  would  not  answer  to  the  idea  of  an 
"  inmost  nature ;"  for  if  knowable  by  any  intelligence,  it 
must,  like  other  properties,  be  relative  to  the  intelligence 
which  knows  it,  that  is,  it  must  solely  consist  in  pro- 
ducing in  that  intelligence  some  specifically  definite 
state  of  consciousness ;  for  this  is  the  only  idea  we  have 
of  knowing;  the  only  sense  in  which  the  verb  "to 
know"  means  anything. 

It  would,  no  doubt,  be  absurd  to  assume  that  our 
words  exhaust  the  possibilities  of  Being.  There  may  be 
innumerable  modes  of  it  which  are  inaccessible  to  our 
faculties,  and  which  consequently  we  are  unable  to  name. 
But  we  ought  not  to  speak  of  these  modes  of  Being  by 
any  of  the  names  we  possess.  These  are  all  inapplicable, 
because  they  all  stand  for  known  modes  of  Being.  We 
might  invent  new  names  for  such  unknown  modes ;  but 


-(t>H' 


»* 


THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE.  15 

the  new  names  would  have  no  more  meaning  than  the 
X,  y,  z,  of  Algebra.  The  only  name  we  can  give  them 
which  really  expresses  an  attribute,  is  the  word  Unknow- 
able. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Eolativity  of  our  knowledge,  in 
the  sense  which  has  now  been  explained,  is  one  of  great 
weight  and  significance,  which  impresses  a  character  on 
the  whole  mode  of  philosophical  thinking  of  whoever 
receives  it,  and  is  the  key-stone  of  one  of  the  only  two 
possible  systems  of  Metaphj'sics  and  Psychology.  But 
the  doctrine  is  capable  of  being,  and  is,  understood  in  at 
least  two  other  senses.  In  one  of  them,  instead  of  a 
definite  and  important  tenet,  it  means  something  quite 
insignificant,  which  no  one  ever  did  or  could  call  in 
question.  Suppose  a  philosopher  to  maintain  that  cer- 
tain properties  of  objects  are  in  the  Thing,  and  not  in 
our  senses ;  in  the  thing  itself,  not  as  whiteness  may  be 
said  to  be_in  the  thing  (namely,  that  there  is  in  the 
thing  a  power  whereby  it  produces  in  us  the  sensation 
of  white),  but  in  quite  another  manner ;  and  are  known 
to  us  not  indirectly,  as  the  inferred  causes  of  our  sensa- 
tions, but  by  direct  perception  of  them  in  the.  outward 
object.  Suppose  the  same  philosopher  nevertheless  to 
affirm  strenuously  that  all  our  knowledge  is  merely 
phaenomenal,  and  relative  to  ourselves;  that  we  do  not 
and  cannot  know  anything  of  outward  objects,  except 
relatively  to  our  own  faculties.  I  think  our  first  feeling 
respecting  a  thinker  who  professed  both  these  doctrines, 
would  be  to  wonder  what  he  could  possibly  mean  by  the 
latter  of  them.  It  would  seem  that  he  must  mean  one 
of  two  trivialities ;  either  that  we  can  only  know  what 
we  have  the  power  of  knowing,  or  else  that  all  our  know- 
ledge is  relative  to  us  inasmuch  as  it  is  we  that  know  it. 

There  is  another  mode  of  understanding  the  doctrine 
of  Relativity,  intermediate  between  these  insignificant 
truisms  and  the  substantial  doctrine  previously  ex- 
pounded. The  position  taken  may  be,  that  perception  I 
of  Things  as  they  are  in  themselves  is  not  entirely 
denied  to  us,  but  is  so  mixed  and  confounded  with ! 
impressions   derived   from   their   action   on   us,   as   to  ' 


16  THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE. 

^ive  a  relative  character  to  the  wLole  aggregate.  Our 
absolute  knowledge  may  be  vitiated  and  disguised  by  the 
presence  of  a  relative  element.  Our  faculty  (it  may  be 
said)  of  perceiving  tilings  as  they  are  in  themselves, 
though  real,  has  its  own  laws,  its  own  conditions,  and 
necessary  mode  of  operation  :  our  cognitions  subse- 
quently depend,  not  solely  on  the  nature  of  the  things 
to  be  known,  but  also  on  that  of  the  knowing  faculty, 
as  our  sight  depends  not  solely  upon  the  object  seen,  but 
upon  that  together  with  the  structure  of  the  eye.  If  the 
eye  were  not  achromatic,  we  should  see  all  visible  objects 
with  colours  derived  from  the  organ,  as  well  as  with 
those  truly  emanating  from  the  object.  Supposing,  there- 
fore, that  Things  in  themselves  are  the  natural  and 
proper  object  of  our  knowing  faculty,  and  that  this 
faculty  carries  to  the  mind  a  report  of  what  is  in  the 
Thing  itself,  apart  from  its  effects  on  us,  there  would 
still  be  a  portion  of  uncertainty  in  these  reports,  inasmuch 
as  we  could  not  be  sure  that  the  eye  of  our  mind  is 
achromatic,  and  that  the  message  it  brings  from  the 
Noumenon  does  not  arrive  tinged  and  falsified,  in  an 
unknown  degree,  through  an  influence  arising  from  the 
necessary  conditions  of  the  mind's  action.  We  may,  in 
short,  be  looking  at  Things  in  themselves,  but  through 
imperfect  glasses :  w4iat  we  see  niay  be  the  very  Thing, 
but  the  colours  and  forms  which  the  glass  conveys  to  us 
may  be  partly  an  optical  illusion.  This  is  a  possible 
opinion  :  and  one  who,  holding  this  opinion,  should  speak 
of  the  Eelativity  of  our  knowledge,  would  not  use  the 
term  wholly  without  meaning.  But  he  could  not,  con- 
sistently, assert  that  all  our  knowledge  is  relative ;  since 
his  opinion  would  be  that  we  have  a  capacity  of  Absolute 
knowledge,  but  that  we  are  liable  to  mistake  relative 
knowledge  for  it. 

In  which,  if  in  any,  of  these  various  meanings,  was 
the  doctrine  of  Relativity  held  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  ? 
To  this  question,  a  more  puzzling  one  than  might  have 
been  expected,  we  shall  endeavour  in  the  succeeding 
chapter  to  find  an  answer. 


17 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE  DOCTRINE   OF    THE   RELATIVITY  OF  HUMAN  KNOVVLEDGj^, 
AS  HELD  BY  SIR  WILLIAM  HAMILTON. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  affirm  more  strongly  or  more  ex- 
plicity  than  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  done,  that  Things  in 
themselves  are  to  us  altogether  unknowable,  and  that  all 
we  can  know  of  anything  is  its  relation  to  us,  composed 
of,  and  limited  to,  the  Phaenomena  which  it  exhibits  to 
our  organs.  Let  me  cite  a  passage  from  one  of  the 
Appendices  to  the  "  Discussions."* 

"  Our  whole  knowledge  of  kind  and  of  matter  is  re- 
"  lative,  conditioned — relatively  conditioned.  Of  things 
"  absolutely  or  in  themselves,  be  they  external,  be  they 
"  internal,  we  know  nothing,  or  know  them  only  as  in- 
''  cognisable;  and  become  aware  of  their  incomprehensible 
"  existence,  only  as  this  is  indirectly  and  accidentally  re- 
"  vealed  to  us,  through  certain  qualities  related  to  our 
"  faculties  of  knowledge,  and  which  qualities,  again,  we 
"  cannot  think  as  unconditioned,  irrelative,  existent  in 
"  and  of  themselves.  All  that  we  know  is  therefore 
"  phaenomenal, — phsenornenal  of  the  unknown  .... 
"  Nor  is  this  denied;  for  it  has  been  commonly  confessed, 
"  that,  as  substances,  we  know  not  what  is  Matter,  and 
"  are  ignoraut  of  wliat  is  Mind." 

This  passage  might  be  matched  by  many  others, 
equally  emphatic,  and  in  appearance  equally  decisive ; 
several  of  which  I  shall  have  occasion  to  quote.  Yet  in 
the  sense  which  the  author's  phrases  seem  to  convey — 
in  the  only  important  meaning  capable  of  being  attached 
to  them — the  doctrine  they  assert  was  certaiul}"  not  held 

*  "  Discussions  on  Philosophy,"  p.  643. 
C 


18  THE    RELATIVITY    OP    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

by  Sir  W.  Hamilton.  He  by  no  means  admits  that  we 
know  nothing  of  objects  except  their  existence,  and  the 
impressions  produced  by  them  upon  the  human  mind. 
Be  affirms  this  in  regard  to  what  have  been  called  by 
metaphysicians  the  Secondary  Qualities  of  Matter,  but 
denies  it  of  the  Primary. 

On  this  point  his  declarations  are  very  explicit.  One 
of  the  most  elaborate  of  his  Dissertations  on  Reid  is 
devoted  to  expounding  the  distinction.  The  Disserta- 
tion begins  thus  :* 

"  The  developed  doctrine  of  Real  Presentationism,  the 
"  basis  of  Natural  Realism"  (the  doctrine  of  the  author 
himself)  "  asserts  the  consciousness  or  immediate  per- 
"  ception  of  certain  essential  attributes  of  Matter  ob- 
"jectively  existing  ;  while  it  admits  that  other  properties 
"  of  body  are  unknown  in  themselves,  and  only  inferred 
"  as  causes  to  account  for  certain  subjective  affections  of 
"  which  we  are  cognizant  in  ourselves.  This  discrimina- 
"  tion,  which  to  other  systems  is  contingent,  superficial, 
"  extraneous,  but  to  Natural  Realism  necessary,  radical, 
"  intrinsic,  coincides  with  what  since  the  time  of  Locke 
•'  has  been  generally  known  as  the  distinction  of  the 
"  Qualities  of  Matter  or  Body,  using  these  terms  as  con- 
''  vertible,  into  Primary  and  Secondary." 

Further  on,t  he  states,  in  additional  development  of 
so-called  Natural  Realism,  "  that  we  have  not  merely  a 
"  notion,  a  conception,  an  imagination,  a  subjective  re- 
"  presentation — of  Extension,  for  example — called  up  or 
"  suggested  in  some  incomprehensible  manner  to  the 
"  mind,  on  occasion  of  an  extended  object  being  pre- 
"  sented  to  the  sense ;  but  that  in  the  perception  of  such 
"  an  object  we  really  have,  as  by  nature  we  believe  we 
"  have,  an  immediate  knowledge  of  that  external  object 
"  as  extended." 

"  If  I  we  are  not  percipient  of  any  extended  reality, 
"  we  are  not  percipient  of  body  as  existing ;  for  body 

*  Dissertations  appended  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Edition  of  Eeid's 
Works,  p.  825. 

f  Dissertations,  p.  842.  J  Ibid. 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  19 

*'  exists,  and  can  only  be  known  immediately,  and  in  '^\  x. 
*' itself,  as  extended.  The  material  world,  on  this  sup-  .,^oi»^  \ 
**  position,  sinks  into  something  unknown  and  proble-  -uk^ 
*'  matical ;  and  its  existence,  if  not  denied,  can,  at  least,  be  \  -^ 
"  only  precariously  affirmed,  as  the  occult  cause,  or  in-  oc**"^^ 
"  comprehensible  occasion,  of  certain  subjective  affections  ^yJ^ 
"  we  experience  in  the  form  either  of  a  sensation  of  the  yyj^* 
"  secondary  quality  or  of  a  perception  of  the  primary."     ^^^  ^ 

Not  only,  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  opinion,  do  we  know,  !^v^      « 
by  direct  consciousness  or  perception,  certain  properties  \^ff^ 
of  Things  as  they  exist  in  the  Things  themselves,  but  -    y^'''^ 
we  may  also  know  those  properties  as  in  the  Things,  by 
demonstration  a  priori.      "  The  notion*  of  body  being 
"  given,  every  primary  quality  is  to   be  evolved  out  of 
"  that  notion,  as  necessarily  involved  in  it,  independently 
*'  altogether  of  any  experience  of  sense."     "  Thef  Pri- 
"  mary  Qualities  may  be  deduced  a  priori,  the  bare  notion 
"  of  matter  being  given ;  they  being,  in  fact,  only  evo- 
"  lutions  of  the  conditions  which  that  notion  necessarily 
"  implies."     He  goes  so  far  as  to  say,  that  our  belief  of 
the  Primary  Qualities  is,   not  merely  necessary  as  in- 
volved in  a  fact  of  which  we  have  a  direct  perception, 
but  necessary  in  itself,  by  our  mental  constitution.     Hej 
speaks  I  of  "  that  absolute  or  insuperable  resistance  which  I 
"  we  are  compelled,  independently  of  experience,  to  think 
"  that  every  part  of  matter  would  oppose  to  any  attempt , 
"  to  deprive  it  of  its  space,  by  compressing  it  into  an  in- 1 
"  extended." 

The  following  is  still  more  specific.  §  "  The  Primary" 
Qualities  "  are  apprehended  as  they  are  in  bodies ;  the 
Secondary,  as  they  are  in  us:  the  Secundo-priraary" 
(a  third  class  created  by  himself,  comprising  the  me-  ^e«*vA 
chanical  as  distinguished  from  the  geometrical  properties 
of  Body)  "  as  they  are  in  bodies  and  as  they  are  in  us.  .  .  . 
"  We  know  the  Primary  qualities  immediately  as  objects 
*'  of  perception  ;  the  Secundo -primary  both  immediately 
"  as  objects  of  perception  and  mediately  as  causes  of  sen-  , 

*  Dissertations,  p.  844. 
t  Ibid.  p.  846.  X  Ibid,  p.  848.  §  Ibid.  pp.  857,  858. 

c2 


.,itr^-' 


20  THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

"  sation ;  the  Secondary  onl}'-  mediately  as  causes  of  seii- 
"  sation.  In  other  words :  The  Primary  are  known  im- 
"  mediately  in  themselves  ;  the  Secundo-primary,  both 
"  immediately  in  themselves  and  mediately  in  their  effects 
"  on  us  ;  the  Secondary,  only  mediately  in  tlieir  effects  on 

"us We   are    conscious,   as    objects,    in   the 

"  Primary  Qualities,  of  the  modes  of  a  not-self;  in  the 
"  Secondary,  of  tlie  modes  of  self;  in  the  Secundo-pri- 
"  mary,  of  the  modes  of  self  and  of  a  not-self  at  once." 

There  is  nothing  wonderful  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
entertaining  these  opinions ;  they  are  held  by  perhaps  a 
majority  of  metaph3^sicians.  But  it  is  surprising  that, 
entertaining  them,  he  should  have  believed  himself,  and 
been  believed  by  others,  to  maintain  the  Relativity  of  all 
our  knowledge.  What  he  deems  to  be  relative,  in  any 
sense  of  the  term  that  is  not  insignificant,  is  only  our 
knowledge  of  the  Secondary  Qualities  of  objects.  Exten- 
sion and  the  other  Primary  Qualities  be  positively  asserts 
that  we  have  an  immediate  intuition  of^  "  as  they  are  in 
bodies" — "as  modes  of  a  not-self ;"  in  express  contra- 
distinction to  being  known  merely  as  causes  of  certain 
impressions  on  our  senses  or  on  our  minds.  As  there 
cannot  have  been,  in  his  own  thoughts,  a  flat  contradic- 
tion between  what  he  would  have  admitted  to  be  the  two 
cardinal  doctrines  of  his  philosophy,  the  only  question 
that  can  arise  is,  which  of  the  two  is  to  be  taken  in  a 
non-natural  sense.  Is  it  the  doctrine  that  we  know 
certain  properties  as  they  are  in  the  Things  ?  Were  we 
to  judge  from  a  foot-note  to  the  same  Dissertation,  we 
might  suppose  so.  He  there  observes* — "  In  saying 
"  that  a  thing  is  known  in  itself,  I  do  not  mean  that  thi^ 
'  "  object  is  known  in  its  absolute  existence,  that  is,  out 
"  of  relation  to  us.  This  is  impossible :  for  our  know- 
•  "  ledge  is  only  of  the  relative.  To  know  a  thing  in  itself 
;  "  or  immediately,  is  an  expression  I  use  merely  in  con- 
I  "  trast  to  the  knowledge  of  a  thing  in  a  representation, 
j  "  or  mediately  :"  in  other  words,  he  merely  means  that 
we  perceive  objects  directly,  and  not  through  the  species 

*  P.  866. 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  21 

sensibiles   of   Lucretius,   the    Ideas    of    Locke,   or  the 
Mental  Modifications  of  Brown.     Let  us  suppose  this 
granted,  and  that  the  knowledge  we  have  of  objects  is 
gained  by  direct  perception.     Still,  the  question  has  to      &iV^ 
be  answered  whether  the  knowledge  so  acquired  is  of  i^^\ 
the  objects  as  they  are  in  themselves,  or  only  as  they  ^5  ^Vj^- 
are  relatively  to  us.     Now  what,  according  to  Sir  W.  i^  ^  ^ 
Hamilton,  is  this  knowledge  ?     Is  it  a  knowledge  of  the  VCl!^* 
Thing,  merely  in  its  effects  on  us,  or  is  it  a  knowledge  of  <  *1  j.Jl^V* 
'  somewhat  in  the  Thing,  ulterior  to  any  effect  on  us  ?  '■"^^'^ 
He  asserts  in  the  plainest  terms  that  it  is  the  latter.   ,;i.«^^ 
Then  it  is  not  a  knowledge  wholly  relative  to  us.     If   i;.>»'''^t 
what  we  perceive  in  the  Thing  is  something  of  which  we  a*»»^.  *. 
are  only  aware  as  existing,  and  as  causing  impressions  on   \-*^'^»V 
us,  our  knowledge  of  the  Thing  is  only  relative.     But  j^^-^ 
if  what  we  perceive  and  cognise  is  not  merely  a  cause  of  o'^^  *^^ 
our  subjective  impressions,  but  a  Thing  possessing,  in  its  ©^"i^*^ 
own  nature  and  essence,  a  long  list  of  properties.  Extension,  ^'  '^^  ^y  \* 
V/^  Impenetrability,  Number,  Magnitude,  Figure,  Mobihty, ^v^-"*]^ 
Position,  all  perceived  as  "  essential  attributes  "  of  the  ^^"^ 
Thing  as   "  objectively  existing" — all  as  "  Modes  of  a 
Not-Self"  and  by  no  means  as  an  occult  cause  or  causes 
of  any  Modes  of  Self — (and  that  such  is  the  case  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  asserts  in  every  form  of  language,  leaving  no 
stone  unturned  to  make  us  apprehend  ttie  breadth  of  the 
distinction)  then  I  am  willing  to  believe  that  in  affirming 
this  knowledge  to  be  entirely  relative  to  Self,  such  a 
thinker  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  had  a  meaning,  but  I  have 
no  small  difficulty  in  discovering  what  it  is. 

The  place  where  we  should  expect  to  find  this  difficulty 
cleared  up,  is  the  formal  exposition  of  the  Belativity  of 
Human  Knowledge,  in  the  first  volume  of  the  Lectures. 

He  declares  his  intention*  of  "  now  stating  and  ex- 
•'  plaining  the  great  axiom  that  all  human  knowledge, 
"  consequently  that  all  human  philosophy,  is  only  of  the 
"  relative  or  phsenomenal.  In  this  proposition,  the  term 
*'  relative  is  opposed  to  the  term  absolute ;  and  therefore, 
"  in  saying  that  we  know  only  the  relative,  1  virtually 
*  Lectures,  L  1U6-8. 


22  THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

"  assert  that  we  know  nothing  absolute, — nothing"  exist- 
"  ing  absolutely,  that  is,  in  and  for  itself,  and  without  rela- 
"  tion  to  us  and  our  faculties.  I  shall  illustrate  this  by 
"  its  application.  Our  knowledge  is  either  of  matter  or 
"  of  raind.  Now,  what  is  matter?  What  do  we  know 
"  of  matter  ^  Matter,  or  body,  is  to  us  the  name  either 
"  of  something  known,  or  of  something  unknown.  In  so 
"far  as  matter  is  a  name  for  something  known,  it  means 
"  that  which  appears  to  us  under  the  forms  of  extension, 
"  solidity,  divisibility,  figure,  motion,  roughness,  smooth- 
"  ness,  colour,  heat,  cold,  &c. ;  in  short,  it  is  a  common 
"  name  for  a  certain  series,  or  aggregate,  or  complement 
"  of  appearances  or  phsenomena  manifested  in  coexistence. 

"  But  as  these  phaenomena  appear  only  in  conjunction, 
."  we  are  compelled  by  the  constitution  of  our  nature  to 
"  think  them  conjoined  in  and  by  something ;  and  as  they 
"  are  phsenomena,  we  cannot  think  them  the  phsenomena 
"  of  nothing,  but  must  regard  them  as  the  properties  or 
"  qualities  of  something  that  is  extended,  solid,  figured, 
"  &c.  But  this  something,  absolutely  and  in  itself, 
"  i.e.  considered  apart  from  its  phsenomena — is  to  us  as 
"  zero.  It  is  only  in  its  qualities,  only  in  its  effects,  in 
"  its  relative  or  phsenomenal  existence,  that  it  is  cogniz- 
"  able  or  conceivable ;  and  it  is  only  by  a  law  of  thought 
"  which  compels  us  to  think  something  absolute  and  un- 
"  known,  as  the  basis  or  condition  of  the  relative  and 
"  known,  that  this  something  obtains  a  kind  of  incom- 
"  prehensible  reality  to  us.  Now,  that  which  manifests 
"  its  qualities — in  other  words,  that  in  which  the  appear- 
"ing  causes  inhere,  that  to  which  they  belong, — is  called 
"  their  subject,  or  substance,  or  substratum.  To  this  sub- 
"  ject  of  the  phsenomena  of  extension,  solidity,  &c.,  the 
"  term  matter  or  material  substance  is  commonly  given ; 
"  and  therefore,  as  contradistinguished  Irom  these  quali- 
"  ties,  it  is  the  name  of  something  unknown  and  incon- 
"  ceivable. 

"  The  same  is  true  in  regard  to  the  term  mind.  In  so 
"  far  as  mind  is  the  common  name  for  the  states  of 
"  knowing,  willing,  feeling,  desiring,  &c.,  of  which  I  am 


AS   HELD    BY    SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  23 

*  conscious,  it  is  only  the  name  for  a  certain  series  of 
'  connected  phjenomena  or  qualities,  and,  consequently, 

*  expresses  only  what  is  known.     But  in  so  far  as  it 

*  denotes  that  subject  or  substance  in  which  the  phseno- 
'  mena  of  knowing,  willing,  &c.,  inhere — something  be- 

*  hind  or  under  these  phaenomena — it  expresses  what, 
'  in  itself  or  in  its  absolute  existence,  is  unknown. 

"  Thus,  mind  and  matter,  as  known  or  knowable,  are 
'  only  two  different  series  of  phaenomena  or  qualities ; 
'  mind  and  matter,  as  unknown  and  unknowable,  are 
'  the  two  substances,  in  which  these  two  different  series 

*  of  phsenomena  or  qualities   are    supposed  to  inhere.      \y 
'  The  existence  of  an  unknown  substance  is  only  an  in-     "^^ 
'  ference  we  are  compelled  to  make  from  the  existence 
'  of  known  phsenomena ;  and  the  distinction  of  two  sub- 
'  stances  is  only  inferred  from  the  seeming  incompati- 

*  bility  of  the  two  series  of  phsenomena  to  coinhere  in 
'one. 

"  Our  whole  knowledge  of  mind  and  matter  is  thus, 
'  as  we  have  said,  only  relative ;  of  existence,  absolutely 

*  and  in  itself,  we  know  nothing :  and  we  may  say  of 
'  man  what  Virgil  said  of  jEneas,  contemplating  in  the 
'  prophetic  sculpture  of  his  shield  the  future  glories  of 
'  E,ome — 

"  Rerumque  ignams,  imagine  gaudet," 

Here  is  an  exposition  of  the  nature  and  limits  of  our 
knowledge,  which  would  have  satisfied  Hartley,  Brown, 
and  even  Comte.  It  cannot  be  more  explicitly  laid 
down,  that  Matter,  as  known  to  us,  is  but  the  incom- 
prehensible and  incognisable  basis  or  substratum  of  a 
bundle  of  sensible  qualities,  appearances,  phsenomena; 
that  we  know  it  "  only  in  its  effects ;"  that  its  very 
existence  is  "only  an  inference  we  are  compelled  to 
make  "  from  those  sensible  appearances.  On  the  subject 
of  Mind,  again,  could  it  have  been  more  explicitly 
affirmed,  that  all  we  know  of  Mind  is  its  successive 
states  "  of  knowing,  willing,  feeling,  desiring,  «&c.,"  and 
that  Mind,  considered  as  "  somethmg  behind  or  under 
these  phaenomena,"  is  to  us  unknowable  ? 


24  THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

Subsequently  he  says,  that  not  only  all  the  know- 
ledge we  have  of  anything,  but  all  which  we  could  have 
if  we  were  a  thousandfold  better  endowed  than  we  are, 
would  still  be  only  knowledge  of  the  mode  in  which  the 
thing  would  affect  us.     Had  we  as  many  senses  (the 
illustration  is  his  own)  as  the  inhabitants  of  Sirius,  in 
the   "  Micromegas"  of  Voltaire ;    were  there,   as  there 
may  well  be,  a  thousand  modes  of  real  existence    as 
definitely  distinguished  from  one  another  as  are  t^ose 
^<vK.    which  manifest  themselves  to  our  present  senses,  and 
^^^  '  "  had  we,*  for  each  of  these  thousand  modes,  a  separate 
^<^  ■'      "  organ  competent  to  make  it  known  to  us, — still  would 
^r^/'        "our  whole  knowledge  be,  as  it  is  afc  present,  only  of 
\yM^-       "the  relative.     Of  existence,  absolutely  and  in  itself,  we 
"  should  then  be  as  ignorant  as  we  are  now.    We  should 
"  still  apprehend  existence  only  in  certain  special  modes — 
,  "  only  in  certain  relations  to  our  faculties  of  knowledge." 
Nothing  can  be  truer  or  more  clearly  stated  than  all 
.     this :  but  the  clearer  it  is,  the  more  irreconcileable  does 
.  .  jV*   it  appear  with  our  author's  doctrine  of  the  direct  cog- 
^*'\^  noscibility  of  the  Primary  Qualities,     If  it  be  true  that 
^^       Extension,  Figure,  and  the  other  qualities  enumerated, 
^  are  known  "immediately  in  themselves,"  and  not,  like 

Secondary  qualities,  "  in  their  eifects  on  us  ;"  if  the 
former  are  "  apprehended  as  they  are  in  bodies,"  and  not, 
like  the  Secondary,  "  as  they  are  in  us ;"  if  it  is  these 
last  exclusively  that  are  *'  unknown  in  themselves,  and 
only  "  inferred  as  causes  to  account  for  certain  subjective 
"  affections  in  ourselves  :"  while,  of  the  former,  we  are 
immediately  conscious  as  "  attributes  of  matter  objec- 
tively existing;"  and  if  it  is  not  to  be  endured  that 
matter  should  "sink  into  something  unknown  and 
problematical,"  whose  existence  "can  be  only  precari- 
"  ouslv  affirmed  as  the  occult  cause  or  incomprehensible 
"  occasion  of  certain  subjective  affections  we  experience 
"  in  the  form  either  of  a  sensation  of  the  secondary  qua- 
"  lity  or  of  a  perception  of  the  primary"  (being  pre- 
cisely what  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  in  the  preceding  quota- 
♦  Lectures,  i.  153. 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  25 

tions,  appeared  to  say  that  it  is) ;  if  these  things  be  so, 
our  faculties,  as  far  as  the  Primary  QuaHties  are  con- 
cerned, do  cognise  and  know  Matter  as  it  is  in  itself, 
and  not  merely  as  an  unknowable  and  incomprehensible 
substratum ;  they  do  cognise  and  know  it  as  it  exists 
absolutely,  and  not  merely  in  relation  to  us ;  it  is  known 
to  us  directly,  and  not  as  a  mere  '*  inference "  from 
Phajnomena. 

Will  it  be  said  that  the  attributes  of  extension,  figure, 
number,  magnitude,  and  the  rest,  though  known  as  in 
the  Things  themselves,  are  yet  known  only  relatively 
to  us,  because  it  is  by  our  faculties  that  we  know  them, 
and  because  appropriate  faculties  are  the  necessary  con- 
dition of  knowledge  ?  If  so,  the  "  great  axiom  "  of 
Kelativity  is  reduced  to  this,  that  we  can  know  things 
as  they  arej^n  themselves,  but  can  know  no  more  of  them 
than  our  faculties  are  competent  to  inform  us  of  If  3<v^^>**" 
such  be  the  meaning  of  Relativity,  our  author  might 
well  maintain*  that  it  is  a  truth  "harmoniously  re- 
echoed by  every  philosopher  of  every  school ;"  nor  need 
he  have  added  "  with  the  exception  of  a  few  late  Ab- 
solute theorizers  in  Germany  i"  for  certainly  neither 
Schelling  nor  Hegel  claims  for  us  any  other  knowledge 
than  such  as  our  faculties  are,  in  their  opinion,  compe- 
tent to  give. 

Is  it  possible,  that  by  knowledge  of  qualities  "  as 
they  are  in  Bodies,"  no  more  was  meant  than  knowing 
that  the  Body  must  have  qualities  whereby  it  produces 
the  aii'ection  of  which  we  are  conscious  in  ourselves  ? 
But  this  is  the  very  knowledge  which  our  author  pre- 
dicates of  Secondary  Qualities,  as  contradistinguished 
from  the  Primary.  Secondary  he  frankly  acknowledges 
to  be  occult  qualities  :  we  really,  in  his  opinion,  have  no 
knowledge,  and  no  conception,  what  that  is  in  an  object, 
by  virtue  of  which  it  has  its  specific  smell  or  taste. 
But  Primary  qualities,  according  to  him,  we  know  all 
about :  there  is  nothing  occult  or  mysterious  to  us  in 
these;  we  perceive  and  conceive  them   as   they  are  in 

*  Discussions,  Appendix,  p.  644. 


26  THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

themselves,  and  as  they  are  in  the  body  they  belong  to. 
They  are  manifested  to  us,  not,  like  the  Secondary 
quahties,  only  in  their  effects,  in  the  sensations  they 
excite  in  us,  but  in  their  own  nature  and  essence. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  surmised,  that  in  calling  knowledge 
of  this  sort  by  the  epithet  Relative,  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
meant  that  though  we  know  those  qualities  as  they  are 
in  themselves,  we  only  discover  them  through  their  re- 
lation to  certain  effects  in  us  ;  that  in  order  that  there 
may  be  Perception  there  must  also  be  Sensation ;  and 
we  thus  know  the  Primary  Qualities,  in  their  effects  on 
us  and  also  in  themselves.  But  neither  will  this  ex- 
planation serve.  This  theory  of  Primary  Qualities  does 
not  clash  with  the  Secondary,  but  it  runs  against  the 
Secundo-primary.  It  is  this  third  class,  which,  as  he 
told  us,  are  known  "  both  immediately  in  thera.selves 
and  mediately  in  their  effects  on  us."  The  Primary  are 
only  known  "  immediately  in  themselves."  He  has  thus 
with  his  own  hands  deliberate!}'"  extruded  from  our 
knowledge  of  the  Primary  qualities  the  element  of  rela- 
tivity to  us  :- — except,  to  be  sure,'  in  the  acceptation  in 
which  knowing  is  itself  a  relation,  inasmuch  as  it  implies 
a  knower ;  whereby  instead  of  the  doctrine  that  Things 
in  themselves  are  not  possible  objects  of  knowledge,  we 
obtain  the  "great  axiom"  that  they  cannot  be  known 
unless  there  is  somebody  to  know  them. 

Can  any  light  be  derived  from  the  statement  that  we 
do  not  know  any  qualities  of  things  except  those  which 
are  in  connextion  with  our  faculties,  or,  as  our  author 
expresses  it  (surely  by  a  very  strained  use  of  language), 
which  are  "  analogous  to  our  faculties  ?"*  If,  by  "  our 
faculties,"  is  to  be  understood  our  knowing  faculty,  this 
proposition  is  but  the  trivial  one  already  noticed,  tliat 
we  can  know  only  what  we  can  know.  And  this  is  what 
the  author  actually  seems  to  mean ;  for  in  a  sentence 
immediately  ibllowmg,!  he  paraphrases  the  expression 
"  analogous  to  our  faculties,"  by  the  phrase  that  we  must 
"  possess  faculties  accommodated  to  their  apprehension." 
*  Lectures,  i.  141,  163.  f  P.  153. 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  27 

To  be  able  to  see,  we  must  have  a  faculty  accommodated 
to  seeing.  Is  this  what  we  are  intended  to  understand 
by  the  "  great  axiom  ?"  But  if  "  our  faculties  "  does 
not  here  mean  our  knowing  faculty,  it  must  mean  our 
sensitive  faculties  ;  and  the  statement  is,  that,  to  be 
known  by  us,  a  quality  must  be  "  analogous  "  (meaning, 
I  suppose,  related)  to  our  senses.  But  what  is  meant  by 
being  related  to  our  senses  ?  That  it  must  be  fitted  to 
give  us  sensations.  We  thus  return  as  before  to  an 
identical  proposition. 

There  is  still  another  possible  supposition  ;  that,  in 
calling  our  knowledge  relative  in  contradistinction  to 
absolute.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  was  not  thinking  of  our 
knowledge  of  qualities,  but  of  substances — of  Matter 
and  Mind ;  and  meant  that  qualities  might  be  cognised 
absolutely,  or  as  they  are  in  themselves,  but  that,  since 
substances  are  only  known  tlirough  their  qualities,  the 
knowledge  of  substances  is  not  knowledge  of  them  as 
they  are  in  themselves,  but  is  merely  relative.  Accord- 
ing to  this  interpretation,  the  relativity  which  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  ascribes  to  our  knowledge  of  substances  is  re- 
lativity not  to  us,  but  to  their  attributes :  we  "  become 
"  aware  of  their  incomprehensible  existence  only  as  this 
"  is  revealed  to  us  through  certain  qualities."  And 
when  he  adds,  "  which  qualities,  again,  we  cannot  think 
"  as  unconditioned,  irrelative,  existent  in  and  of  them- 
"  selves,"  thus  predicating  relativity  of  attributes  also 
(considered  as  known  or  conceived  by  us),  he  means  rela- 
tivity to  a  substance.  We  can  only  know  a  substance 
through  its  qualities,  but  also,  we  can  only  know  quali- 
ties as  inhering  in  a  substance.  Substance  and  attri- 
bute are  correlative,  and  can  only  be  thought  together  : 
the  knowledge  of  each,  therefore,  is  relative  to  the  other ; 
but  need  not  be,  and  indeed  is  not,  relative  to  us.  For 
we  know  attributes  as  they  are  in  themselves,  and  our 
knowledge  of  them  is  only  relative  inasmuch  as  attri- 
butes have  only  a  relative  existence.  It  is  relative 
knowledge  in  a  sense  not  contradictory  to  absolute.  It 
is  an  absolute  knowledge,  though  of  things  which  only 


28  THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE   , 

exist  in  a  necessary  relation  to  another  thing  called  a 
substance.* 

1  am  not  disposed  to  deny  that  this  interpretation  of 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  doctrine  is,  to  a  certain  point,  correct. 
He  did  draw  a  distinction  between  our  manner  of  know- 
ing attributes  and  our  manner  of  knowing  substances ; 
and  did  regard  certain  attributes  (the  primary  qualities) 
as  objects  of  direct  and  immediate  knowledge  ;  whjch, 
in  his  opinion,  substances  are  not,  but  are  merely  as- 
sumed or  inferred  from  phsenomena,  by  a  law  of  our 
nature  which  compels  us  to  think  phsenomena  as  attributes 
of  something  beyond  themselves.  I  do  not  doubt  that 
when  he  said  that  our  knowledge  of  attributes  is  relative, 
the  necessity  of  thinking  every  attribute  as  an  attribute 
of  a  substance  was  present  to  his  mind,  and  formed  a 
part  of  his  meaning.  There  is,  however,  abundant  evi- 
dence that  the  relativity  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  ascribed 
to  our  knowledge  of  attributes  was  not  merely  relativity 
to  their  substances,  but  also  relativity  to  us.  He  affirms 
of  attributes  as  positively  as  of  substances,  that  all  our 
knowledge  of  them  is  relative  to  us.  The  passages 
already  quoted  apply  as  much  to  attributes  as  to  sub- 
stances. "  In  saying  that  we  know  only  the  relative,  I 
"  virtually  assert  that  we  know  nothing  absolute — nothing 
"  existing  absolutely,  that  is,  in  and  for  itself,  '.mdiwitliuut 
"  relation  to  us  and  our  faculties."'\  "  In  saying  that  a 
"  thing  is  known  in  itself,  I  do  not  mean  that  this  object 
"  is  known  in  its  absolute  existence,  that  is,  out  of  rela- 
"  tion  to  us.  This  is  impossible,  for  our  knowledge  is  only 
"  of  the  relative." \  In  the  following  passages  he  is 
speaking  solely  of  attributes.  "  By  the  expression  what 
"  theg  are  in  themselves,  in  reference  to  the  primary 
*'  qualities,  and  of  relative  notion  in  reference  to  the 
*'  secondary,  Keid  cannot  mean  that  the  former  are 
"  known  to  us  absolutely  and  in  themselves,  that  is,  out 

*  This  is  essentially  the  interpretation  put  on  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
meaning  by  the  ingenious  reviewer  of  the  present  work  in  the  Edinburgh 
Heview. 

t  Lectures,  i.  137.  J  Dissertations,  p.  866. 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  29 

"  of  relation  to  our  cognitive  faculties ;  for  he  elsewhere 
"  admits  that  all  our  knowledge  is  relative."*  "  We 
"  can  know,  we  can  conceive,  only  what  is  relative. 
"  Our  knowledge  of  qualities  or  phaenomena  is  neces- 
"  sarily  relative  ;  for  these  exist  onl}^  as  they  exist  in 
"  relation  to  our  faculties. "f  The  distinction,  therefore, 
which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  recognises  between  our  know- 
ledge of  substances  and  that  of  attributes,  though 
authentically  a  part  of  his  philosophy,  is  quite  irrelevant 
here.  He  affinns  without  reservation,  that  certain  at- 
tributes (extension,  figure,  &c.)  are  known  to  us  as  they 
really  exist  out  of  ourselves;  and  also  that  aU  our 
knowledge  of  them  is  relative  to  us.  And  these  two 
assertions  are  only  reconcileable,  if  relativity  to  us  is 
understood  in  the  altogether  trivial  sense,  that  we  know 
them  only  so  far  as  our  faculties  permit.  J 

The  conclusion  I  cannot  help  drawing  from  this  col- 
lation of  passages  is,  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  either  never 
held,  or  when  he  wrote  the  Dissertations  had  ceased  to 
hold  (for  his  theory  respecting  knowledge  of  the  Primarv 
Qualities  does  not  occur  in  the  Lectures)  the  doctrine 
for  which  he  has  been  so  often  praised  and  nearly  as 
often  attacked — the  Relativity  of  Human  Knowledge. 
He  certainl}^  did  sincerely  believe  that  he  held  it.  But 
he  repudiated  it  in  every  sense  which  makes  it  other 
than  a  barren  truism.  In  the  only  meaning  in  which  he 
really  maintained  it,  there  is  nothing  to  maintain.  It 
is  an  identical  proposition,  and  nothing  more. 

And  to  this,  or  something  next  to  this,  he  reduces  it 
in  the  first  portion  of  the  summary  with  which  he  con- 
cludes its  exposition.     "  From  what  has  been  said,"  he 

*  Footnote  to  Reid,  p.  313. 

t  lb.  p.  320.  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Mansel  (Philosophy  of  the  Con- 
ditioned, p.  79)  for  reminding  me  of  the  last  two  passages.  I  should  not 
have  failed  to  quote  them  in  the  first  edition,  if  I  had  kept  references  to 
them. 

J  I  may  add  that  even  the  Edinburgh  Reviewer's  supposition  does  not 
save  either  the  relativity  of  human  knowledge  to  us,  or  its  relativity  in 
the  sense  in  which  relative  is  opposed  to  absolute,  as  doctrines  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton :  for  by  the  Reviewer's  interpretation  our  knowledge  of  attributes 
would  be  relative  only  to  their  substances ;  absolute  in  their  cognition  by  us. 


30  THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

observes,*  "you  will  be  able,  I  hope,  to  understand 
"  what  is  meant  by  the  proposition,  that  all  our  know- 
"  ledge  is  only  relative.  It  is  relative,  1st.  Because  ex- 
"  istence  is  not  cognisable  absolutely  in  itself,  but  only 
"  in  special  modes ;  2nd.  Because  these  modes  can  be 
"  known  only  if  they  stand  in  a  certain  relation  to  our 
"  faculties."  Whoever  can  find  anything  more  in  these 
two  statements,  than  that  we  do  not  know  all  about  a 
Thing,  but  only  as  much  about  it  as  we  are  capable  of 
knowing,  is  more  ingenious  or  more  fortunate  than 
myself 

He  adds,  however,  to  these  reasons  why  our  know- 
ledge is  only  relative,  a  third  reason.  "  3rd.  Because  the 
"  modes,  thus  relative  to  our  faculties,  are  assented  to,  and 
"  known  by,  the  mind  only  under  modifications  deter- 
"  mined  by  those  faculties  themselves."  Of  this  addition 
to  the  theory  we  took  notice  near  the  conclusion  of  the 
preceding  chapter.  It  shall  have  the  advantage  of  a 
fuller  explanation  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  words. 

"  Inf  the  perception  of  an  external  object,  the  mind 
"  does  not  know  it  in  immediate  relation  to  itself,  but 
"  mediately,  in  relation  to  the  material  organs  of  sense. 
"  If,  therefore,  we  were  to  throw  these  organs  out  of 
"  consideration,  and  did  not  take  into  account  what  they 
*•  contribute  to,  and  how  they  modify,  our  knowledge  of 
"  that  object,  it  is  evident  that  our  conclusion  in  regard 
"  to  the  nature  of  external  perception  would  be  erroneous. 
^  *'  Again,  an  object  of  perception  may  not  even  stand  in 
*'  immediate  relation  to  the  organ  of  sense,  but  may 
"  make  its  impression  on  that  organ  through  an  inter- 
"  vening  medium.  Now,  if  this  medium  be  thrown  out 
"  of  account,  and  if  it  be  not  considered  that  the  real 
*'  external  object  is  the  sum  of  all  that  externallj'^  con- 
"  tributes  to  affect  the  sense,  we  shall,  in  like  manner, 
"  run  into  error.  For  example,  I  see  a  book — I  see  that 
"  book  through  an  external  medium  (what  that  medium 
"  is,  we  do  not  now  inquire)  and  I  see  it  through  my 
"  organ  of  sight,  the  eye.  Now,  as  the  full  object  pre- 
*  Lectures,  i.  148.  f  Ibid.  pp.  146-148. 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  31 

"  seated  to  ttie  mind  (observe  that  T  sa}'-  the  tniud)  in 
"  perception,  is  an  object  compounded  of  the  external 
"  object  emitting  or  reflecting  light,  i.e.,  modifying  the 
"  external  medium — of  this  external  medium — and  of 
"  the  living  organ  of  sense,  in  their  mutual  relation, 
"  let  us  suppose,  in  the  example  I  have  taken,  that  the 
"  full  or  adequate  object  perceived  is  equal  to  twelve,  and 
"  that  this  amount  is  made  up  of  three  several  parts ;  of 
"  four,  contributed  by  the  book, — of  four,  contributed  by 
"  all  that  intervenes  between  the  book  and  the  organ, — 
"  and  of  four,  contributed  by  the  living  organ  itself.  I 
"  use  this  illustration  to  show  that  the  phienomenon  of 
"  the  external  object  is  not  presented  immediately  to 
"  the  mind,  but  is  known  by  it  only  as  modified 
"  throuofh  certain  intermediate  ao^encies  :  and  to  show. 
"  that  sense  itself  may  be  a  source  of  error,  if  we  do 
"  not  analyze  and  distinguish  what  elements,  in  an  act 
"  of  perception,  belong  to  the  outward  reality,  what  to 
"  the  outward  medium,  and  what  to  t\\d  action  of  sense 
"  itself.  But  this  source  of  error  is  not  limited  to  our 
"  perceptions ;  and  we  are  liable  to  be  deceived,  not 
"  merely  by  not  distinguishing  in  an  act  of  knowledge 
"  what  is  contributed  by  sense,  but  by  not  distinguishing 
"  what  is  contributed  by  the  mind  itself.  This  is  the 
"  most  difficult  and  important  function  of  philosophy ; 
"  and  the  greater  number  of  its  higher  problems  arise  in 
"  the  attempt  to  determine  the  shares  to  which  the 
"  knowing  subject,  and  the  object  known,  may  pretend 
"  in  the  total  act  of  cognition.  For  according  as  we 
"  attribute  a  larger  or  a  smaller  proportion  to  each,  we 
"  either  run  into  the  extremes  of  Idealism  and  Mate- 
*'  rialism,  or  maintain  an  equilibrium  between  the  two." 
The  proposition,  that  our  cognitions  of  objects  are 
only  in  part  dependent  on  the  objects  themselves,  and 
in  part  on  elements  superadded  by  our  organs  or  by  our 
minds,  is  not  identical,  nor  prima  facie  absurd.  It  can- 
not, however,  warrant  the  assertion  that  all  our  know- 
ledge, but  only  that  the  part  so  added,  is  relative.  If  our 
author  had  gone  as  far  as  Kant,  and  had  said  that  all 


32  THE   RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

the  primary  qualities  which  we  think  we  perceive  in 
bodies,  are  put  in  by  the  mind  itself,  he  would  have 
really  held,  in  one  of  its  forms,  the  doctrine  of  the 
Relativity  of  our  knowledge.  But  what  he  does  say, 
far  from  implying  that  the  whole  of  our  knowledge  is 
relative,  distinctly  imports  that  all  of  it  which  is  real 
and  authentic  is  the  reverse.  If  any  part  of  what  we 
fancy  that  we  perceive  in  the  objects  themselves,  origi- 
nates in  the  perceiving  organs  or  in  the  cognising  mind, 
thus  much  is  purely  relative ;  but  since,  by  supposition, 
it  does  not  all  so  originate,  the  part  that  does  not,  is  as 
much  absolute  as  if  it  were  not  liable  to  be  mixed  up 
with  these  delusive  subjective  impressions.  The  ad- 
mixture of  the  relative  element  not  only  does  not  take 
away  the  absolute  character  of  the  remainder,  but  does 
not  even  (if  our  author  is  right)  prevent  us  from  recog- 
nising it.  The  confusion,  according  to  him,  is  not  in- 
extricable. It  is  for  us  to  "  analyze  and  distinguish  what 
elements"  in  an  "  act  of  knowledge"  are  contributed  by 
the  object,  and  what  by  our  organs,  or  by  the  mind. 
"We  may  neglect  to  do  this,  and  as  far  as  the  mind's 
share  is  concerned,  can  only  do  it  by  the  help  of  philo- 
sophy ;  but  it  is  a  task  to  which  in  his  opinion  philosophy 
is  equal.  By  thus  stripping  off  such  of  the  elements  in 
our  apparent  cognitions  of  Things  as  are  but  "cognitions 
of  something  in  us,  and  consequently  relative,  we  may 
succeed  in  uncovering  the  pure  nucleus,  the  direct  in- 
tuitions of  Things  in  themselves ;  as  we  correct  the 
observed  positions  of  the  heavenly  bodies  by  allowing 
for  the  error  due  to  the  refracting  influence  of  the 
atmospheric  medium,  an  influence  which  does  not  alter 
the  facts,  but  only  our  perception  of  them. 

This  last  doctrine,  however, — that  the  mind's  own  con- 
stitution contributes  along  with  the  outward  object,  to 
make  up  what  is  called  our  knowledge  of  the  object, — 
is  what  Mr.  Mansel  maintains  Sir  W.  Hamilton  to 
have  meant  by  the  assertion  that  our  whole  knowledge 
of  the  object  is  relative.  And  this  is  the  foundation  of 
all  tliat  Mr.  Mansel  presents  as  a  refutation  of  the 
present  chapter. 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  33 

If  it  be  true  (to  use  Mr.  Hansel's  words)*  that,  in  the 
constitution  of  our  knowledge,  the  mind  "  reacts  on  the  ' 
"  objects  affecting  it,  so  as  to  produce  a  result  different  \ 
"  from  that  which  would  be  produced,  were  it  merely  a 
*'  passive  recipient,"  this  modifying  action  of  the  mind 
must  consist,  as  is  affirmed  by  Kant  and  by  all  others 
who  profess  the  doctrine,  in  making  us  ascribe  to  the 
object,  and  apprehend  as  in  the  object,  properties  which 
are  not  really  in  the  object,  but  are  merely  lent  to  it  by 
the  constitution  of  our  mental  nature.  Now,  if  the  attri- 
butes which  we  perceive,  or  think  we  perceive,  in  objects, 
are  partly  given  by  the  mind,  but  not  wholly,  being  also 
partly  given  by  the  nature  of  the  object  itself  (which  is 
admitted  to  be  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  opinion) ;  this  joint 
agency  of  the  object  and  of  the  mind's  own  laws  in  gene- 
rating what  we  call  our  knowledge  of  the  object,  may  be 
conceived  in  two  ways.  .. 

First :  The  two  factors  may  be  jointly  operative  in  every  I  <^ 
part  of  the  effect.  Every  attribute  with  which  we  per-  ''  ^ 
ceive  the  thing  as  invested,  may  be  a  joint  product  of 
the  thing  itself  and  of  the  modifying  action  of  the  mind. 
If  this  be  the  case,  we  do  not  really  know  any  property 
as  it  is  in  the  object :  we  have  no  reason  to  think  that 
the  object  as  we  apprehend  it,  and  as  we  figure  to  our- 
selves that  we  perceive  and  know  it,  agrees  in  any  respect 
with  the  object  that  exists  without  us ;  but  only  that  it 
depends  upon  that  outward  object,  as  one  of  its  joint 
causes.  Such  was  the  opinion  of  Kant ;  and  whoever  is 
of  this  opinion,  holds,  in  one  of  its  forms,  as  I  have  ex- 
pressly admitted,  the  genuine  doctrine  of  the  Relativity 
of  our  knowledge.  For  all  must  agree  with  Mr.  Mansei 
when  he  says,  that  an  object  of  thought,  into  which  the 
mind  puts  a  positive  element  of  its  own,  thereby  making 
it  different  from  what  it  otherwise  would  be,  is  that  which 
it  is,  only  relatively  to  the  mind.  This  seems  to  be  Mr. 
Mansel's  own  mode  of  representing  to  himself  the  com- 
bined action  of  the  mind  and  the  object  in  perception. 

*  Mansei,  p.  64. 
D 


> 


> 


34  THE   RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

For  he  compares  it*  to  the  action  of  an  acid  and  an  alkali  in 
forming  a  neutral  salt ;  andf  to  a  chemical  fusion  together 
of  two  elements,  in  contradistinction  to  a  mere  mechanical 
juxtaposition.  Tf  we  had  never  seen,  and  could  not  get  at, 
the  acid  or  the  alkali  except  as  united  in  the  salt,  Mr. 
Mansel  could  not  think  that  our  knowledge  of  the  salt 
gave  us  any  knowledge  of  the  acid  or  the  alkali  them- 
selves. 

But,  secondly :  There  is  another  mode  in  which  the 
co-operation  of  the  object  and  the  mind's  own  properties 
in  producing  our  cognition  of  the  object,  may  be  con- 
ceived as  taking  place.  Instead  of  there  being  joint 
agents  in  producing  our  cognitions  of  all  the  attributes 
with  which  we  mentally  clothe  the  object,  some  of  the 
attributes  as  cognised  by  us  may  come  from  the  object 
only,  and  some  from  the  mind  only,  or  from  both.  Now 
it  is  not  open  to  a  holder  of  this  second  opinion,  as  it  is 
to  one  of  the  first,  to  affirm  that  all  the  attributes  are 
only  known  relatively  to  us.  Such  of  them,  indeed,  as 
are  made  to  be  that  which  they  are  by  what  the  mind 
puts  into  them,  are,  on  this  theory,  only  known  relatively 
to  the  mind :  they  have  even  no  existence  except  rela- 
tively to  the  mind.  But  those  into  which  no  positive 
element  is  introduced  by  the  mind's  laws  (I  say  no  posi- 
tive element,  because  a  mere  negative  limitation  by  the 
mind's  capacities  is  nothing  to  the  purpose),  these,  as 
their  cognition  contains  nothing  but  what  is  presented  in 
the  external  object,  must  be  held  to  be  known  not  rela- 
tively, but  absolutely.  The  doubt  how  much  of  what  we 
apprehend  in  them  is  due  to  our  own  constitution,  and 
how  much  to  the  external  world,  has  no  place  here  :  they 
are,  by  supposition,  wholly  perceptions  of  something  in 
the  external  world. 

Now,  this  second  view  of  the  joint  action  of  the  mind 
and  the  outward  thing,  as  the  two  factors  in  our  cog- 
nition of  the  thing,  is  Sir  W.  Hamilton's.  The  pas- 
sages in  which  he  characterizes  our  knowledge  of  the 

♦  Mansel,  p.  71.  t  Ibid.  p.  76. 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  35 

Primary  Qualities  place  this  beyond  question.  He  affirms  \ 
clearly  and  consistently  that  extension,  figure,  and  the 
other  Primary  Qualities  are  known  by  us  "  as  they  are  in 
bodies,"  and  not  "  as  they  are  in  us ;"  that  they  are  known 
as  "  essential  attributes  of  matter  objectively  existing ;" 
as  "  modes  of  a  not-self,"  not  even  combined,  as  in  the 
Secundo-primary,  with  any  "  modes  of  self;"  so  that  no 
element  originating  in  our  subjective  constitution  in-  i 
terferes  with  the  purity  of  the  apperception.  In  this 
respect  the  physical  phenomena  which  Mr.  Mansel 
calls  in  as  illustrations  afford  no  parallel.  No  one 
would  say  that  the  acid  in  a  neutral  salt  is  perceived 
and  known  by  us  in  the  salt  as  what  it  is  as  an 
acid.  Indeed,  the  discrimination  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  | 
thinks  it  possible  for  philosophy  to  make,  between  that  ! 
in  our  knowledge  which  the  object  contributes  and  that  | 
which  the  mind  contributes,  almost  requires  as  its  con- 
dition that  some  attributes  should  be  wholly  contributed 
by  the  one  and  some  by  the  other :  for  if  every 
attribute  was  the  joint  product  of  both,  it  is  difficult 
to  see  what  means  the  case  could  afford  of  making  the 
discrimination,  any  more  than  of  discriminating  between 
the  acid  and  the  alkali  in  Mr.  Hansel's  salt.  The 
question,  how  much  of"  the  salt  is  due  to  the  acid  and 
how  much  to  the  alkali,  is  not  merely  unresolvable,  but 
intrinsically  absurd.* 

*  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  the  appearance  of  disclaiming  the  opinion  here 
attributed  to  him,  and  professing  the  alternative  opinion  that  every  attri- 
bute is  a  joint  product  of  the  object  and  the  mind,  in  the  following  foot- 
note to  Reid  (p.  313) : —  Pk 

"  The  distinctions  of  perception  and   sensation,  and  of  primary  and  »  K/^  cP 

'  to  one  higher  principle.  Knowledge    ^V^-"^^ 


"  secondary  qualities,  may  be  reduced 

"  is  partly  objective,  partly  subjective  ;  both  these  elements  are  essential 

"  to  every  cognition,  but  in  every  cognition  they  are  always  in  the  inverse 

"  ratio  of  each  other.     Now,  in^perception  and  the  primary  qualities,  the 

"  objective  element  preponderates ;  whereas  the  subjective  element  pre- 

"poSerates  in  sensation   and   the  secondary  qualities.      See  Notes  D 

"andD*." 

But  a  reference  to  the  Notes  in  question  will  shew,  that  in  admitting  a 
subjective  element  in  the  Primary  Qualities,  he  only  meant  that  a  sub- 
jective element  accompanies  our  apprehension  of  them ;  that  whenever 
we  perceive  the  primary  qualities  we  are  conscious  of  a  sensation  also. 
"  Sensation  proper,"  he  says,  "  is  the  conditio  sine  quanonoi  a  Perception 

d2 


> 


36  THE    RELATIVITY    OF   HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

Mr.  Mansel's  mode  of  reconciling  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
emphatic  declaration,  that  we  know  the  Primary  Qualities 
as  they  are  in  objects,  with  his  assertion  of  the  entire 
incognosoibility  of  Things  in  themselves,  is  by  saying* 
that  "  obiects"  are  not  identical  with  "  thinsrs  in  them- 


selves." "  Objective  existence,"  he  says.f  "  does  not  mean 
"  existence  per  se ;  and  a  phenomenon  does  not  mean  a 
"  mere  mode  of  mind.  Objective  existence  is  existence  as 
"  an  object,  in  perception,  and  therefore  in  relation ;  and 
"  a  phenomenon  may  be  material,  as  well  as  mental.  The 
"  thing  per  se  may  be  only  the  unknown  cause  of  what 
"  we  directly  know ;  but  what  we  directly  know  is  some- 
"  thing  more  than  our  own  sensations.  In  other  words, 
"  the  phenomenal  effect  is  material  as  well  as  the  cause, 
"  and  is,  indeed,  that  from  which  our  primary  conceptions 
"  of  matter  are  derived." 

Now,  this  is  a  possible  opinion ;  it  was  really  the 
opinion  of  Kant.  That  philosopher  did  recognise  a 
direct  object  of  our  perceptions,  different  from  the  thing 
itself,  and  intermediate  between  it  and  the  perceiving 
mind.  And  it  was  open  to  Kant  to  do  so ;  because  he 
held  what  Sir  W.  Hamilton  calls  a  representative  theory 
of  perception.  He  maintained  that  tlie  object  of  our 
perception,  and  of  our  knowledge,  is  a  representation  in 
our  own  minds.  In  his  philosophy,  both  object  and  sub- 
ject are  accommodated  within  the  mind  itself — the  object 
within  the  subject.  The  mind  has  no  perception  of  the 
external  thing,  nor  comes  into  any  contact  with  it  in  the 


"  proper  of  the  Primary  qualities."  And  again,  "  Every  Perception  proper 
"  h.as  a  Sensation  proper  as  its  condition."  "  The  fact  of  Sensation  proper 
"  and  the  fact  of  Perception  proper  imply  each  other :"  they  always  co- 
exist, though  "  in  the  degree  or  intensity  of  their  existence  they  are  always 
"  found  in  an  inverse  ratio  to  one  another"  (Reid,  p.  886).  This  co- 
existence does  not  prevent  the  two  from  being  entirely  distinct.  "  The 
"  apprehensions  of  the  Primary"  qualities  "  are  perceptions,  not  sensa- 
"  tions  ;  of  the  Secondary,  sensations,  not  perceptions ;  of  the  Secundo- 
"  primary,  perceptions  and  sensations  together"  (p.  858).  Perceptions, 
the  apprehensions  of  the  Primary  qualities,  are  themselves  wholly 
objective. 

*  Mansel,  p.  79.  f  Ibid.  p.  82. 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTOX.  37 

act  of  perception.*   Was  this  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  opinion? 
On  the  contrary,  if  there  be  a  doctrine  of  his  philosophy 
which  he  has   laboured  at  beyond  any  other,  against, 
as  he  affirms,  nearly  all  philosophers,  it  is,   that  the 
thing  we  perceive  is  the  real  thing  which  exists  outside 
us,  and  that  the  perceiving  mind  is  in  direct  contact  with 
it,  without  any  intermediate  link  whatever.     We  never 
hear  from  Sir  W.  Hamilton  of  three  elements  in  our 
cognition  of  the  outward  world,  but  of  two  only,  the 
mind,  and  the  real  object ;  which  he  sometimes  calls  the 
external  object,  sometimes  Body,  sometimes  Matter,  some-  I 
times  a  Non-ego.     Yet,  according  to   Mr.  Mansel,  he  ' 
must  have  believed  that  this  object,  which  he  so  strenu- 
ously contended  to  be  the  very  thing  itself,  is  not  the 
very  thing  ifi  itself,  but  that  behind  it  there  is  another 
Thing  in  itself,  the  unknown  cause  of  it.     I  can  discover 
no  trace  in  Sir  W.   Hamilton's   writings  of  any  such 
entity.     The  outward  things  which  he  believed  to  exist, 
he  believed  that  we   perceive  and  know  :  not,  indeed, 
"  absolutely  or  in  themselves,"  because  only  in  such  of 
their  attributes  as  we  have  senses  to  reveal  to  us ;  but  yet 
as  they  really  are.    He  did  not  believe  in,  or  recognise,  a  i 
Thing  joer  se,  itself  unknowable,  but  engendering  another 
material  object  called  a  phsenomenon,  which  is  knowable.  ! 
The  only  distinction  he  recognised  between  a  phainome-  j 
non  and  a  Thing  jyer  se,  was  that  between  attributes  and  | 
a  substance.     But  he  believed  the  primary  attributes  to 
be  known  by  us  as  they  exist  in  the  substance,  and  not . 
in  some  intermediate  object.f 

*  Such,  at  least,  is  the  doctrine  of  Kant  in  the  first  edition  of  the 
Kritik,  though,  in  the  so-called  Eefutation  of  IdeaHsm  introduced  into 
the  second,  he  is  sometimes  supposed  to  have  intended  to  explain  it  away; 
but  Mr.  Mahaffy  (Introd.  part  iv.  and  notes  to  Appendix  C)  seems  to 
have  expla,ined  away  the  explanation ;  and  Mr.  Stirling,  who  holds  (p.  30) 
"  the  second  edition  of  the  Kritik  of  Pure  Reason  to  supersede  the  first," 
still  credits  Kant  with  this  doctrine,  interpreting  in  a  sense  consistent 
with  it,  the  externality  which  Kant  ascribes  to  objects  in  space.  Kant's 
external  and  internal  were  both  internal  to  the  mind.  Nothing  but  the 
noumenon  was  external  to  it. 

t  If  any  doubt  could  remain  that  Mr.  Mansel  defends  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton by  ascribing  to  him  an  opinion  he  never  held,  the  following  passage 


38  THE    RELATIVITY    OP    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

The  mark  by  which  Mr.  Mansel  distinguishes  between 
the  object  and  the  Thing  in  itself,  is  that  the  object  is 
in  space  and  time,  but  the  Thing  out  of  space  and  time ; 
space  and  time  having  merely  a  subjective  existence,  in 
us,  not  in  external  nature.  This  is  Kantism,  but  it  is 
not  Hamiltonism,  I  do  not  believe  that  the  expression 
"  out  of  space  and  time"  is  to  be  found  once  in  all  Sir 

would  dispel  it.  "  If,  indeed,"  says  Mr.  Mansell  (p.  83)  "  Hamilton  had 
"  said  with  Locke,  that  the  primary  qualities  are  in  the  bodies  themselves, 
"  whether  we  perceive  them  or  no,  he  would  have  laid  himself  oi:>en  to 
"  Mr.  Mill's  criticism.  But  he  expressly  rejects  this  statement,  and  con- 
"  trasts  it  with  the  more  cautious  language  of  Descartes,  '  ut  sunt,  vel 
"  saltem  esse  possunt.'  "  Sir  W.  Hamilton  may  never  have  said,  totidem 
verbis,  that  the  Primaiy  Qualities  are  in  the  bodies  even  when  we  do  not 
perceive  them  :  but  can  any  one  who  has  read  his  writings  doubt  that  this 
was  his  opinion ?  The  passage  which  Mr.  Mansel  refers  to  as  "reject- 
ing" it  (Dissertations,  p.  839)  runs  as  follows : — "  On  the  doctrine  of 
"  both  philosophers"  (Locke  and  Descartes)  "  we  know  nothing  of  material 
"existence  in  itself:  we  know  it  only  as  represented,  or  in  idea.  When 
"  Locke,  therefore,  is  asked,  how  he  became  aware  that  the  known  idea 
*'  truly  represents  the  unknown  reality,  he  can  make  no  answer.  On  the 
"  first  principles  of  his  philosophy,  he  is  wholly  and  necessarily  ignorant 
"  whether  the  idea  does  or  does  not  represent  to  his  mind  the  attributes 
"  of  matter,  as  they  exist  in  nature.  His  assertion  is,  therefore,  con- 
"  fessedly  without  a  warrant ;  it  transcends,  ex  hypothesi,  the  sphere  of 
"  possible  knowledge.  Descartes  is  more  cautious.  He  only  says,  that 
"  our  ideas  of  the  qualities  in  question  represent  those  qualities  as  they 
"  are,  or  as  they  may  exist ;  '  ut  sunt,  vel  saltem  esse  possunt.'  The 
"  Oosmothetic  Idealist  can  only  assert  to  them  a  problematical  reality." 

Mr.  Mansel  actually  thinks  this  an  adoption  of  Descartes'  opinion  ;  and 
does  not  see  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  merely  pronounces  Descartes  to  be 
right  and  Locke  wrong  from  their  own  point  of  view,  that  of  Oosmothetic 
Idealism.  As  Oosmothetic  Idealists,  they  have,  he  says,  no  evidence  that 
the  qualities  we  perceive  are  in  the  object  itself,  and  are  as  we  perceive 
them.  Not  admitting  that  we  directly  perceive  the  qualities  in  the 
object,  they  cannot  do  more  than  assert  problematically  that  the  qualities 
are  in  the  object ;  and  this  Descartes  saw,  and  Locke,  more  inconsistently, 
did  not  see.  But  what  they  as  Oosmothetic  Idealists  could  not  aiErm,  Sir 
W.  Hamilton,  as  a  Natural  Eealist,  could ;  because,  as  a  Natural  Realist, 
he  held  that  we  directly  perceive  the  qualities  in  the  object.  Mr.  Mansel 
mistakes  one  of  the  thousand  statements  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  of  lijs 
difference  with  the  Oosmothetic  IdeaUsts,  for  an  adhesion  to  them. 
(Mr.  Mansel,  in  his  rejoinder,  admits  and  withdraws  this  error.)  Sir 
W.  Hamilton,  as  Professor  Fraser  observes  (p.  22),  believed  that  "  the 
'■  solid  and  extended  percepts  which  our  sensations  reveal  to  us,  exist, 
"  whether  we  are  conscious  or  not."  He  believed  that  bodies  exist  whether 
we  perceive  them  or  not,  and  that  they  always  carry  their  "essential 
attributes,"  the  Primary  Qualities,  with  them :  if,  therefore,  he  had  thought 
that  the  Primary  Qualities  only  exist  while  we  perceive  them,  he  must 
have  thought  so  of  the  bodies  likewise,  and  must  have  believed  that  we 
create  the  bodies  in  the  act  of  perceiving  them;   which  Kant,   who 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  39 

W.  Hamilton's  writings.  It  belongs  to  the  Kantian, 
not  to  the  Hamiltonian  philosophy.  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
does  indeed  hold  with  Kant,  and  on  Kant's  shewing, 
that  space  and  time  are  a  priori  forms  of  the  mind,  but 
he  believes  that  thej  are  also  external  realities,  known 
empirically.*  And  it  is  worth  notice,  that  he  grounds 
the  outward  reality  of  Space,  not  on  his  favourite  evi- 
dence, that  of  our  Natural  Beliefs,  but  on  the  specific 
reason,  that  (Extension  being  only  another  name  for 
Space),  if  Space   was  not  an  outward  thing  cognizable 

deemed  the  body  we  perceive  to  be  really  in  tlie  mind,  did  believe ;  but 
if  Sir  W.  Hamilton  did,  his  whole  philosophy  of  perception  is  without  a 
meaning. 

In  the  essay  in  his  "  Discussions,"  headed  "  Philosophy  of  Perception," 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  speaks  of  the  knowledge  of  external  objects  claimed  by 
a  Natural  Realist,  ipsissimis  verbis,  as  knowledge  of  "  things  in  them- 
selves." (Discussions,  p.  57,  in  the  statement  of  the  opinion  of  Hypo- 
thetical Realists.) 

For  a  critical  examination  of  the  doctrine  ascribed  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
by  Mr.  Mansel,  that  of  an  external  object  cognizable  by  us,  and  an  un- 
cognizable  Noumenon  besides,  I  may  refer  to  Mr.  Bolton's  able  work, 
pp.  218  et  seqq. 

Mr.  Mansel,  in  his  rejoinder,  though  he  does  not  give  up  the  theory  of 
the  tertium  quid,  does  not  further  insist  on  it ;  but  attempts  to  shew  that 
when  Sir  W.  Hamilton  speaks  of  knowing  the  Primary  qualities  as  they 
are  in  themselves,  and  as  they  are  in  the  body,  he  means  knowing  them 
ia  immediate  relation  to  the  mind,  in  contradistinction  to  knowing  them 
mediately  through  a  mental  representation,  or  merely  inferring  them  as 
the  hypothetical  cause  of  a  mental  state.  I  admit,  and  have  already 
admitted,  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  did  mean  this,  and  did  say  that  he  meant 
it.  But  the  "  immediate  relation  to  the  mind"  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
thus  distingiiished  from  the  different  modes  of  mediate  relation,  is  no 
other  than  that  between  perceiver  and  perceived  :  and  to  say  that  all  our 
knowledge  is  relative,  meaning  only  this  relation,  is  but  to  say,  that  we 
know  of  external  things  only  what  we  perceive  of  them,  and  that  in  order 
that  we  may  know  an  object  of  sense  it  must  be  presented  to  our  senses. 
The  knowledge,  when  we  do  get  it,  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  is  not 
(in  the  case  of  Primary  qualities)  knowledge  of  an  impression  made  on 
our  own  sensitive  faculty,  which  would  be  really  relative  knowledge ;  it  is 
knowledge  of  the  Thing  as  it  exists  in  itself,  independently  of  our  per- 
ceptions. It  is  this  which,  as  I  have  pointed  out,  reduces  the  pretended 
Relativity  to  a  name. 

It  is  a  great  confirmation  of  the  unmeaningness  of  the  Relativity  Doc- 
trine in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  hands,  that  those  who  have  most  studied  his 
philosophy.  Dean  Mansel  and  Professor  Veitch,  are  reduced  to  such  straits 
in  the  attempt  to  find  a  meaning  for  it,  and  do  not  always  find  the  same 
meaning. 

*  See  Lectures,  ii.  113,  114 ;  Discussions,  p.  16;  Dissertations,  p.  882  ; 
and,  in  further  illustration,  foot  note  to  Reid,  p.  126 ;  passages  strangely 
overlooked  by  Mr.  Mansel  (p.  138;. 


40  THE    RELATlVlTt   Of   HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

a  posteriori,  we  could  not,  as  he  affirms  that  we  do, 
cognize  Extension  as  an  external  reality.  He  must 
therefore  have  thought,  not  that  Space  is  a  mere  form  in 
which  our  perceptions  of  objects  are  clothed  by  the  laws 
of  our  perceiving  faculty,  but  that  we  perceive  real  things 
in  real  space.* 

Mr.  Mansel  is  not  the  only  one  of  my  critics  who  has 
interpreted  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  doctrine  of  our  direct 
knowledge  of  outward  objects,  as  if  those  outward  objects 
were  a  tertium  quid,  between  the  mind  and  the  real  out- 
ward, or  if  the  expression  may  be  permitted,  the  outer 
outward  object.  For,  irreconcilable  as  this  supposition 
is  with  the  evidence  of  his  writings,  it  is  the  only  one 
which  can  be  thought  of  to  give  a  substantial  meaning 
to  his  doctrine  of  Kelativity,  consistent  with  the  external 
reality  of  the  Primary  Qualities.  Professor  Mason  con- 
sequently had  already  taken  refuge  in  the  same  inter- 
pretation as  Mr.  Mansel ;  but  propounded  it  in  the 
modest  form  of  an  hypothesis,  not  a  dogmatical  asser- 
tion. The  North  American  Eeviewer  in  like  manner 
saysf  :  "  An  existence  non-ego  may  be  immediately  cog- 
"  nizable  consistently  with  the  doctrine  of  the  relativity 
"  of  knowledge,  provided  this  non-ego  be  phenomenal, 
"  that  is,  necessarily  dependent  on  some  other  incogniz- 

"  able  existence  among  the  real  causes  of  things 

"  If  the  meaning  of  the  word  phenomenon  which  we 
"  have  attributed  to  Hamilton  be  a  valid  one,  his  philo- 
"  sophy  escapes  from  this  criticism  by  affirming  that  the 
"  primary  qualities  of  matter,  that  is,  the  having  exten- 
"  sion,  figure,  &c.,  though  not  cognized  as  the  effects  of 

*  When  Sir  W.  Hamilton  says  (Dissertations,  p.  841)  that  although 
8pace  is  a  native,  necessary,  a  priori  form  of  imagination,  we  yet  have 
an  immediate  perception  of  a  really  objective  extended  world,  Mr.  Mansel 
imagines  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  maintaining  at  once  the  subjectivity 
of  Space,  and  the  objectivity  of  bodies  as  occupying  space.  But  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  himself  declares  unequivocally  that  these  two  opinions  contra- 
dict one  another,  unless  reconciled  by  the  suppositiou  that  Space  is 
objective  and  external  to  us  as  well  as  subjective  :  not,  therefore,  properly 
a  form  of  our  mind,  but  an  outward  reality  which  has  a  form  of  our 
iiiind  corresponding  to  it»  See  the  whole  of  the  passages  referred  to  in 
the  last  note> 

t  Pp.  252,  253. 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR   WILIJAM    HAMILTON.  41 

"  matter  on  us,  are  yet  modes  of  existence  implying  an 
"  unknown  substance,  and  are  hence  phenomenal  in 
"  Hamilton's  meaning  of  the  word."  This  explanation 
might  pass,  if  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  assertion  of  the  rela- 
tivity of  our  knowledge  to  our  mind  were  all  contained 
in  the  word  phsenomenal,  and  could  be  explained  away 
by  supposing  that  word  to  mean  relativity  not  to  us, 
but  to  an  unknown  cause.  But  I  need  not  requote  his 
declaration  that  our  knowledge  of  Qualities  is  all  relative 
to  us,  nor  his  assertion  that  nevertheless  certain  qualities 
are  in  the  object,  and  are  perceived  and  known  in  the 
object,  and  that  the  object  perceived  and  known  is  no 
other  than  the  real  Thing  itself.  Nowhere  in  his  works 
do  I  find  any  recognition  of  another  real  Thing,  which 
is  not  the  Thing  perceived  by  us  through  its  attributes. 
He  does  not  tell  us  of  a  Body  perceived,  and  an  unper- 
ceived  Substance  in  the  background :  the  Body  is  the 
Substance.  He  does  indeed  say  that  the  Substance  is 
only  an  inference  from  the  Attributes ;  but  he  also  says 
that  certain  attributes  are  perceived  as  in  the  real  exter- 
nal Thing  ;  and  he  never  drops  the  smallest  hint  of  any 
real  external  thing  in  which  the  attributes  can  be,  except 
the  Substance  itself,  which  he  expressly  defines  as 
"  that  which  manifests  its  qualities,"  that  in  which 
"  the  phaenomena  or  qualities  are  supposed  to  in- 
"  here." 

Professor  Fraser,  in  the  (in  many  respects)  profound 
Essay  of  which  he  has  done  this  work  the  honour  of 
making  it  the  occasion,  vindicates  at  once  the  consistency 
of  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  and  the  substantial  significance  of 
his  doctrine  of  Kelativity,  by  ascribing  to  him,  in  oppo- 
sition to  his  incessant  declarations,  Mr.  Eraser's  own  far 
clearer  views  of  the  subject.  Mr.  Fraser,  like  myself, 
believes  the  Primary  Qualities  to  have  no  more  existence 
out  of  our  own  or  other  minds,  than  the  Secondary  **"  "^ 
Qualities  have,  or  than  our  pains  and  pleasures  have ;  "^y^  ^^ 
and  he  asks,*  "  Where  does  he  "  (Sir  W.  Hamilton)  "  say  ^^^'^ 

*  Fraser,  p.  16. 


■^  w\*  ^y^j-^ 


42  THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE 

"  that  we  have  an  absolute  knowledge  of  the  primary 

"  qualities  of  matter,  in  any  other  sense   than  that  in 

"  which  he  says  that  we  have  a  like  knowledge  of  a  feel- 

"  ing  of  pain  or  pleasure  in  our  minds  while  it  is  being 

"  felt,  or  of  an  act  of  consciousness  while  it  is  being 

"  acted?"     To  this  "where,"  I  answer,  in  every  place 

where  he  says  that  we  know  the  Primary  Qualities  not 

as  they  are  in  us,  but  as  they  are  in  the  13ody.     That  is 

asserting  an  absolute  knowledge  of  tiiem,  as  distinguished 

from  relativity  to  us  :  and  he  would  not  have  made  a 

similar  assertion  of  our  pains  and   pleasures,   or  of  our 

acts  of  internal  consciousness.    Again,  asks  Mr.  Fraser,* 

"  How  does  the  assertion  that  we  are  percipient  directly, 

,    "  and  not  through  a  medium,  of  phenomena  of  solidity  . 

"  and  extension,   contradict  the  principle   that  all  our 

"  knowledge  is  relative,  when  the  assertion  that  we  are 

"  percipient,  directly  and  not  through  a  medium,  of  the 

*'  phenomena  of  sensation    or   emotion  or  intelligence 

^^n^  "  does  not  ?"'     Because  the  phajnomena  of  sensation  or 

.^  v^'  emotion  or  intelligence  are  admitted  to  be  perceived  or 

'^    •  ' '    ■  felt  as  facts  that  have  no  reality  out  of  us,  and  the  facts 

being  only  relative  to  us,  the  knowledge   of  the  facts 

i^(u>"^^-  ■   partakes  of  the  same  relativity  :  but  the  phaenomena  of 

^*-'  solidity  and  extension  are  alleged  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton 

.^A*'' ,  T     to  be    perceived  as  facts  whose    reality  is    out  of   our 

^t^^-  p-jijj(j^y^  ajj(j  j^  ^}-jg  material  object :  which  is  indeed  know- 

^'  ft\o^  I  ijig  them  relatively  to  the   outward  object,  but  is   the 

^~.     '  diametrical  opposite  of  knowing  them  relatively  to  us.f 

It  has  now  been  shown,  by  accumulated  proof,  that 

*  Eraser,  p.  15. 
f  Mr.  Fraser  affirms  (p.  20)  with  me,  and  contrary  to  Mr.  Mansel  and 
the  North  American  Reviewer,  that  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  opinion  ''  there 
"  is  nothing  behind  the  proper  objects  of  sense-consciousnessj,  these  being 
"  the  very  things  or  realities  themselves  which  we  call  material,  external, 
"  extended,  solid."  Instead  of  recognizing  three  elements,  a  Nouraenal 
real  thing,  a  Phaenomenal  real  thing,  and  the  perceiving  mind,  the  middle 
one  of  the  three  being  that  which  the  mind  cognizes,  Mr.  Fraser  sees  that 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  recognised  but  one  real  Thing,  the  very  Thing  which  we 
perceive  ;  unknown  to  us  in  its  essence,  but  perceived  and  known  through 
its  attributes ;  and  by  means  of  those  attributes,  actually  brought  into 
what  Sir  W.  Hamilton  calls  our  consciousness.  This  Mr.  Fraser  regards 
as  "  a  distinct  and  important  contribution  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  to  the 


^\yX^ 


-  •  JU.' 


AS    HELD    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  43 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  did  not  hold  any  opinion  in  virtue  of 
which  it  could  rationally  be  asserted  that  all  human 
knowledge  is  relative  ;   but  did  hold,  as  one  of  the  main     ; 
elements  of  his  philosophical  creed,  the  opposite  doctrine,     j 
of  the  cognoscibility  of  external  Things,  in  certain  of    | 
their  aspects,  as  they  are  in  themselves,  absolutely.  ' 

But  if  this  be  true,  what  becomes  of  his  dispute  with    . 

"  theory  of  matter  previously  common  in  this  country,"  because  bringing 
matter  into  our  consciousness  is  part  of  the  way  towards  making  it  (what 
Mr.  Fraser  believes  it  to  be)  wholly  a  phaenomenon  of  mind.  But  Sir  W, 
Hamilton  did  not  intend  his  doctrine  to  lead  to  this  ;  he  admits  Matter 
into  our  consciousness  because,  contrary  to  the  general  opinion  of  philo- 
sophers, he  thinks  (see  below,  chap,  viii.)  that  we  can  be  conscious  of  / 
what  is  outside  our  mind.  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  in  short,  was  not  a  Berkeleian,  ^ 
asTSTr.Traser  is,  and  as  that  philosopher  almost  admits  (p.  26)  that  the 
intei-pretation  which  he  would  like  to  put  on  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  doctrine 
would  make  Sir  W.  Hamilton. 

Mr.  Fraser  seems  to  me,  throughout  his  defence  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
to  have  yielded  to  the  natural  tendency  of  a  consistent  thinker  when 
standing  up  for  an  inconsistent  one,  to  interpret  ambiguous  utterances 
which  face  two  ways,  as  if  they  looked,  only  one  way ;  though  the  part  of 
their  author's  philosophy  towards  which  those  expressions  face  on  their 
other  side,  is  thereby  set  at  nought  and  abolished. 

Since  the  publication  of  the  third  edition  of  this  work,  my  attention 
has  been  drawn  to  a  passage  (unfortunately  left  unfinished)  in  the  post- 
humous continuation  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Dissertations  on  Reid,  which 
strikingly  confirms  the  opinion  I  have  expressed,  that  the  relativity  of 
human  knowledge,  as  understood  by  him,  is  a  mere  identical  proposition. 

"  That  all  knowledge  consists  in  a  certain  relation  of  the  object  known 
"  to  the  subject  knowing,  is  self-evident.  What  is  the  nature  of  this 
"  relation,  and  what  are  its  conditions,  is  not,  and  never  can  be,  known  to 
"  us ;  because  we  know  only  the  qualities  of  our  own  faculties  of  know- 
"  ledge,  as  relations  to  their  objects,  and  we  only  know  the  qualities  of 
"  their  objects,  as  relations  to  our  minds.  All  qualities  both  of  mind  and 
"  of  matter  are  therefore  only  known  to  us  as  relations ;  we  know  nothing 
"  in  itseh.  We  know  not  the  cause  of  this  relation,  we  know  nothing  of 
"  its  conditions,  the  fact  is  all.  The  relation  is  the  relation  of  knowledge. 
"  We  know  nothing  consequently  of  the  kind  of  the  relation  ;  we  have  no 
"  consciousness  and  no  possible  knowledge  whether  the  relation  of  know- 
"  ledge  has  any  analogy  to  the  relations  of  similarity,  contrariety,  identity, 
"  difference — we  have  no  consciousness  that  it  is  like  any  other,  or  any 
"  modification  of  any  other :  these  are  all  relations  of  a  different  kind 
"between  object  and  object;  this  between  subject  and  object:  we  can 
'•  institute  no  point  of  comparison"  (Reid,  p.  965). 

That  is  to  say,  we  know  nothing  except  in  relation  to  us,  but  that 
relation  is  simply  the  relation  of  being  known  by  us,  and  this  is  the  only 
relation  cognizable  by  us  which  exists  l^tween  the  knower  and  the  known. 
Our  knowledge  is  relative,  but  only  in  the  sense  that  knowing  is  itself  a 
relation.  Would  Cousin,  or  Hegel,  or  Schelling,  have  had  the  shghtest 
objection  to  admit  that  our  knowledge  even  of  the  Absolute  is  relative, 
in  the  sense  that  it  is  we  that  know  it  P 


44  THE    RELATIVITY    OF    HUMAN    KNOWLEDGE. 

Cousin,  and  with  Cousin's  German  predecessors  and 
teachers  ?  That  celebrated  controversy  surely  meant 
something.  Where  there  was  so  much  smoke  there 
must  have  been  some  fire.  Some  difference  of  opinion 
must  really  have  existed  between  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and 
his  antagonists. 

Assuredly  there  was  a  difference,  and  one  of  great  im- 
portance from  the  point  of  view  of  either  disputant ;  not 
unimportant  in  the  view  of  those  who  dissent  from 
them  both.  In  the  sacceedmg  chapter  I  shall  endeavour 
to  point  out  what  the  difference  was. 


45 


CHAPTER  IV. 


IN  WHAT  RESPECT  SIR  WILLIAM  HAMILTON  REALLY  DIFFERS 
FROM   THE    PHILOSOPHERS    OF    THE   ABSOLUTE. 

The  question  really  at  issue  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  cele- 
brated and  striking  review  of  Cousin's  philosophy,  is 
this :  Have  we,  or  have  we  not,  an  immediate  intuition 
of  God.  The  name  of  God  is  veiled  under  two  ex- 
tremely abstract  phrases,  "  The  Infinite"  and  "  The 
Absolute,"  perhaps  from  a  reverential  feeling :  such,  at 
least,  is  the  reason  given  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  disciple, 
Mr.  Mansel,*  for  preferring  the  more  vague  expressions. 
But  it  is  one  of  the  most  unquestionable  of  all  logical 
maxims,  that  the  meaning  of  the  abstract  must  be  sought 
for  in  the  concrete,  and  not  conversely;  and  we  shall 
see,  both  in  the  case  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  of  Mr. 
Mansel,  that  the  process  cannot  be  reversed  with  im- 
punity, f 

*  Bampton  Lectures.  (The  Limits  of  Religious  Thought.)  Fourth 
edition,  p.  42. 

t  Mr.  Mansel  (pp.  90 — 98)  denies  the  correctness  of  the  representations 
made  in  this  paragraph ;  and  at  least  seems  to  assert,  that  the  question 
between  M.  Cousin  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  did  not  relate  to  the  possibility 
of  knowing  the  Infinite  Being,  but  to  a  "  pseudo-concept  of  the  Infinite," 
which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  believed  to  be  not  a  proper  predicate  of  God,  but 
a  representation  of  a  non-entity.  And  Mr.  Mansel  affirms  (p.  92)  that  to 
substitute  the  name  of  God  in  the  place  of  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute, 
is  exactly  to  reverse  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  argument.  We  have  here  a  direct 
issue  of  fact,  of  wbich  every  one  is  a  judge  who  will  take  the  trouble  to 
read  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Essay.  I  maintain  that  what  M.  Cousin  affirms 
and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  denies,  is  the  cognoscibility  not  of  an  Infinite  and 
Absolute  which  is  not  God,  but  of  the  Infinite  and  Absolute  which  is  God. 
I  might  refer  to  almost  any  page  of  the  Essay ;  I  will  only  quote  the 
application  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  himself  makes  of  his  own  doctrine 
(Disc.  p.  15,  note).  "  True,  therefore,  are  the  declarations  of  a  pious  phi- 
"  losophy  :— '  A  God  understood  would  be  no  God  at  all.'  '  To  think  that 
"  God  is,  as  we  can  think  him  to  be,  is  blasphemy.'    The  Divinity,  in  a 


46  SIR    AVII.LTAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN. 

I  proceed  to  state,  chiefly  in  the  words  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  the  opinions  of  the  two  parties  to  the  con- 
troversy. Both  undertake  to  decide  what  are  the  facts 
which  (in  their  own  phraseology)  are  given  in  Conscious- 
ness ;  or,  as  others  say,  of  which  we  have  intuitive 
knowledge.  According  to  Couiifin,  there  are,  in  every 
act  of  consciousness,  three  elements ;  three  things  of 
which  we  are  intuitively  aware.  Tliere  is  a  finite  ele- 
ment; an  element  of  plurality,  compounded  of  a  Self 
or  Ego,  and  something  different  from  Self,  or  Non-ego. 
There  is  also  an  infinite  element ;  a  consciousness  of 
something  infinite.    "  At*  the  same  instant  when  we  are 

"  certain  sense,  is  revealed  ;  in  a  certain  sense,  is  concealed  :  he  is  at  once 
"  known  and  nnknowji.  But  the  last  and  highest  consecration  of  all  true 
"religion,  must  be  an  altar  'Ayvaa-Tm  Ofw — '  '^I'o  the  unknown  and  nnknow- 
"  able  Grod.'  "  When  this  is  what  the  author  of  the  Essay  presents  as 
its  practical  result,  it  is  too  much  to  tell  us  that  the  Essay  is  not  con- 
cerned about  God  but  about  a  "  Pseudo-Infinite,"  and  that  we  are  not 
entitled,  when  we  find  in  it  an  assertion  about  the  Infinite,  to  hold  the 
author  to  the  assertion  as  applicable  to  God.  We  shall  next  be  told  that 
Mr.  Mansel  himself,  in  his  Bampton  Lectures,  is  not  treating  the  question 
of  our  knowledge  of  God.  It  is  very  true  that  the  only  Infinite  about 
which  either  Sir  W.  Hamilton  or  Mr.  Mansel  proves  anything,  is  a 
Pseudo-Infinite  ;  but  they  are  not  in  the  least  aware  of  this ;  they  fancy 
that  this  Pseudo- Infinite  is  the  real  Infinite,  and  that  in  proving  it  to  be 
unknowable  by  us,  they  prove  the  same  thing  of  God. 

The  reader  who  desires  further  elucidation  of  this  point,  may  consult 
the  sixth  chapter  of  Mr.  Bolton's  Inquisitio  Philosophica.  That  acute 
thinker  also  points  out  various  inconsistencies  and  other  logical  errors  in 
Mr.  Mansel's  work,  with  which  I  am  not  here  concerned,  my  object  in 
answering  him  not  being  recrimination,  but  to  maintain  my  original 
assertions  against  his  denial. 

Mr.  Mansel,  in  his  rejoinder,  quotes  from  his  Bampton  Lectures  some 
passages  in  which  he  says,  and  others  in  which  he  implies,  that  "  our 
"  human  conception  of  the  Infinite  is  not  the  true  one,"  and  that  "  the 
"  infinite  of  philosophy  is  not  the  true  Infinite  :"  and  thinks  it  very  unfair 
that,  with  these  passages  before  me,  I  should  accuse  him  of  mistaking  a 
pseudo-infinite  for  the  real  Infinite.  But  the  mistake  from  which  he  clears 
himself  is  not  that  which  I  charged  him  with.  I  maintained,  that  the 
abstraction  "  The  Infinite,"  in  whatever  manner  understood,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  some  particular  attribute  possessed  in  an  infinite  degree, 
has  QO  existence,  and  is  a  pseudo-infinite.  Mr.  Mansel,  on  the  contrary, 
affirmed  throughout,  and  affirms  in  the  very  passages  which  he  quotes, 
that  "The  Infinite"  has  a  real  existence,  and  is  God:  though  when  we 
attempt  to  conceive  what  it  is,  we  only  reach  a  mass  of  contradictions, 
which  is  a  pseudo-infinite.  Mr.  Mansel  did  not  suppose  his  pseudo-infinite 
to  be  the  true  Infinite  ;  but  my  assertion,  which  stands  unrefuted,  is,  that 
his  "  true  Infinite"  is  a  pseudo-infinite ;  and  that  in  proving  it  to  be  un- 
knowable by  us,  he  mistakenly  fancied  that  he  had  proved  this  of  God. 
*  Discussions,  p.  9. 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST   COUSIN.  47 

"  conscious  of  these  [finite]  existences,  plural,  relative, 
"  and  contingent,  we  are  conscious  likewise  of  a  superior 
"  unity  in  which  they  are  contained,  and  by  which  they 
"  are  explained  ;  a  unity  absolute  as  they  are  conditioned, 
"  substantive  as  they  are  phsenomenal,  and  an  infinite 
"  cause  as  they  are  finite  causes.  This  unity  is  God." 
The  first  two  elements  being  the  Finite  and  God,  the 
third  element  is  the  relation  between  the  Finite  and  God, 
which  is  that  of  cause  and  effect.  These  three  things 
are  immediately  given  in  every  act  of  consciousness,  and 
are,  therefore,  apprehended  as  real  existences  by  direct 
intuition. 

Of  these  alleged  elements  of  Consciousness,  Sir  VV. 
Hamilt(m  only  admits  the  first ;  the  Finite  element,  com- 
pounded of  Self  and  a  Not-self,  "  limiting:  and  condition- 
ing one  another."  He  denies  that  God  is  given  in 
immediate  consciousness — is  apprehended  by  direct  intui- 
tion. It  is  in  no  such  way  as  this  that  God,  according 
to  him,  is  known  to  us  :  and  as  an  Infinite  and  Absolute 
Being  he  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  known  to  us  at  all ;  for 
we  have  no  faculties  capable  of  apprehending  the  Infinite 
or  the  Absolute.  The  second  of  M.  Cousin's  elements 
being  thus  excluded,  the  third  (the  Relation  between  the 
first  and  second)  falls  with  it;  and  Consciousness  remains 
limited  to  the  finite  element,  compounded  of  an  Ego  and 
a  Non-ego. 

In  this  contest  it  is  almost  superfluous  for  me  to  say, 
that  I  am  entirely  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton.  The  doctrine, 
that  we  have  an  immediate  or  intuitive  knowledge  of 
God,  I  consider  to  be  bad  metaphysics,  involving  a  false 
conception  of  the  nature  and  limits  of  the  human  facul- 
ties, and  grounded  on  a  superficial  and  erroneous  psycho- 
logy. Whatever  relates  to  God  I  hold  to  be  matter  of 
inference ;  I  would  add,  of  inference  a  posteriori.  And 
in  so  far  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  contributed,  which  he 
has  done  very  materially,  towards  discrediting  the  oppo- 
site doctrine,  he  has  rendered,  in  my  estimation,  a  valuable 
service  to  philosophy.  But  thougli  I  assent  to  his  con- 
clusion, his  arguments  seem  to  me  very  far  from  inex- 


48  SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN. 

pug^nable  :  a  sufficient  answer,  T  conceive,  might  without 
difficulty  be  given  to  most  of  them,  though  I  do  not  say- 
that  it  was  always  competent  to  M.  Cousin  to  give  it. 
And  the  arguments,  in  the  present  case,  are  of  as  much 
importance  as  the  conclusion  :  not  only  because  they  are 
quite  as  essential  a  part  of  Sir  W,  Hamilton's  philosophy, 
but  because  they  afford  the  premises  from  which  some 
of  his  follow^ers,  if  not  himself,  have  drawn  inferences 
which  I  venture  to  think  extremely  mischievous.  While, 
therefore,  I  sincerely  applaud  the  scope  and  purpose  of 
this  celebrated  piece  of  philosophical  criticism,  I  think 
it  important  to  sift  with  some  minuteness  the  reasonings 
it  employs,  and  the  general  mode  of  thought  which  it 
exemplifies. 

The  question  is,  as  already  remarked,  whether  we  have 
a  direct  intuition  of  "  1he  Infinite"  and  "  the  Absolute  :" 
M.  Cousin  maintaining  that  we  have — Sir  W.  Hamilton 
that  we  have  not ;  that  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute  are 
inconceivable  to  us,  and,  by  consequence,  unknowable. 

It  is  proper  to  explain  to  any  reader  not  familiar  with 
these  controversies,  the  meaning  of  the  terms.  Infinite 
requires  no  explanation.  It  is  universally  understood 
to  signify  that,  to  the  magnitude  of  which  there  is  no 
limit.  If  we  speak  of  infinite  duration,  or  infinite  space, 
we  are  supposed  to  mean  duration  which  never  ceases, 
and  extension  which  nowhere  comes  to  an  end.  Absolute 
is  much  more  obscure,  being  a  word  of  several  meanings  ; 
but,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  stands  related  to  Infinite,  it 
means  (conformably  to  its  etymology)  that  which  is 
finished  or  completed.  There  are  some  things  of  which 
the  utmost  ideal  amount  is  a  liiiiited  quantity,  though  a 
quantity  never  actually  reached.  In  this  sense,  the 
relation  between  the  Absolute  and  the  Infinite  is  (as 
Bentham  would  have  said)  a  tolerably  close  one,  namely 
a  relation  of  contrariety.  For  example,  to  assert  an 
absolute  minimum  of  matter,  is  to  deny  its  infinite 
divisibility.  Again,  we  may  speak  of  absolutely,  but  not 
of  infinitely,  pure  water.  The  purity  of  water  is  not  a  fact 
of  which,  whatever  degree  we  suppose  attained,  there  re- 


SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN.  49 

mains  a  greater  beyond.  It  has  an  absolute  limit :  it  is 
capable  of  being  finished  or  complete,  in  thought,  if  not 
in  reality.  The  extraneous  substances  existing  in  any 
vessel  of"  water  cannot  be  of  more  than  finite  amount,  and 
if  we  suppose  them  all  withdrawn,  the  purity  of  the  water 
cannot,  even  in  idea,  admit  of  further  increase. 

The  idea  of  Absolute,  in  this  sense  of  the  term,  being 
thus  contrasted  with  that  of  Infinite,  they  cannot,  both 
of  them,  be  truly  predicated  of  God;  or,  if  truly,  not  in 
respect  of  the  same  attributes.  But  the  word  Absolute, 
without  losing  the  signification  of  perfect  or  complete, 
may  drop  that  of  limited.  It  may  continue  to  mean 
the  whole  of  that  to  which  it  is  applied ;  but  without 
requiring  that  this  whole  should  be  finite.  Granted  (for 
instance)  a  being  of  infinite  power,  that  Being's  know- 
ledge, if  supposed  perfect,  must  be  infinite  ;  and  may 
therefore,  in  an  admissible  sense  of  the  term,  be  said  to 
be  both  absolute  and  infinite.*  In  this  acceptation  there 
is  no  inconsistency  or  incongruity  in  predicating  both 
these  words  of  God. 

*  In  the  first,  edition  of  this  work  it  was  maintained,  that  though  Power 
admits  of  being  regarded  as  Infinite,  Knowledge  does  not ;  because  "  the 
"  highest  degree  of  knowledge  that  can  be  spoken  of  with  a  meaning,  only 
"  amounts  to  knowing  all  that  there  is  to  be  known."  But  Mr.  Mansel 
and  the  "  Inquirer"  (author  of  "The  Battle  of  the  Two  Philosophies'") 
have  justly  remarked,  that  on  the  supposition  of  an  Infinite  Being,  "all 
that  there  is  to  be  known"  includes  all  which  a  Being  of  infinite  power 
can  think  or  create;  consequently,  the  power  being  infinite,  the  know- 
ledge, if  supposed  complete,  must  be  infinite  too.  In  regard  to  the  moral 
attributes,  it  was  said  in  the  first  edition,  that  Absolute  is  the  proper 
word  for  them,  and  not  Infinite,  since  those  attributes  "cannot  be  more 
"  than  perfect.  There  are  not  infinite  degrees  of  right.  The  will  is 
"  either  entirely  right,  or  wrong  in  difierent  degrees."  In  this  I  did  not 
properly  distinguish  between  moral  rightness  or  justice  as  predicated  of 
acts  or  mental  states,  and  the  same  regarded  as  attributes  of  a  person. 
Conformity  to  the  standard  of  right  has  a  po;iitive  limit,  which  can  only 
be  reached,  not  surpassed  ;  but  persons,  though  all  exactly  conforming  to 
the  standard,  may  differ  in  the  strength  of  their  adherence  to  it :  in- 
fluences (temptations  for  example)  might  detach  one  of  them  from  it, 
which  would  have  no  effect  upon  another.  There  are  thus,  consistently  with 
complete  observance  of  the  rule  of  right,  innumerable  gradations  of  the 
attribute  considered  as  in  a  person.  But,  on  the  other  hanil,  there  is  an 
extreme  limit  to  these  gradations — the  idea  of  a  Person  whom  no  influences 
or  causes,  either  in  or  out  of  himself,  can  deflect  iu  the  minutest  degree 
from  the  law  of  right.  This  I  apprehend  to  be  a  conception  of  absolute, 
not  of  infinite,  righteousness.     The  doctrine,  therefore,  of  the  first  edition, 

E 


50  SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN. 

The  word  Absolute,  however,  has  other  meanings, 
which  have  nothing  to  do  with  perfection  or  complete- 
ness, though  often  mixed  and  confounded  with  it ;  the 
more  readily  as  they  are  all  habitually  predicated  of  the 
Deity.  By  Absolute  is  often  meant  the  opposite  of  Re- 
lative ;  and  this  is  rather  many  meanings  than  one ;  for 
llelative  also  is  a  term  used  very  indefinitely,  and 
wherever  it  is  employed,  the  word  Absolute  alwaj's 
accompanies  it  as  its  negative.  In  another  of  its  senses, 
Absolute  means  that  which  is  independent  of  anything 
else  :  which  exists,  and  is  what  it  is,  by  its  own  nature, 
and  not  because  of  any  other  thing.  In  this  fourth 
sense  as  in  the  third,  Absolute  stands  for  the  nei^ation 
of  a  relation  ;  not  now  of  Relation  in  general,  but  of  the 
specific  relation  expressed  b}^  the  term  Effect.  In  this 
signification  it  is  S3'nonymous  with  uncaused,  and  is 
therefore  most  naturally  identified  with  the  First  Cause. 
The  meaning  of  a  First  Cause  is,  that  all  other  things 
exist,  and  are  what  they  are,  by  reason  of  it  and  of  its 
properties,  but  that  it  is  not  itself  made  to  exist,  nor  to 
be  what  it  is,  by  anything  else.  It  does  not  depend,  for 
its  existence  or  attributes,  on  other  things  :  there  is 
nothing  upon  the  existence  of  which  its  own  is  con- 
ditional :  it  exists  absolutely. 

In  which  of  these  meanings  is  the  term  used  in  the 
polemic  with  M.  Cousin  ?  M.  Cousin  makes  no  dis- 
tinction at  all  between  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute. 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  distinguishes  them  as  two  species  of  a 
higher  genus,  the  Unconditioned ;  and  defines  the  Infi- 
nite as  "the  unconditionally  unlimited,"  the  Absolute 
as  "the  unconditionally  limited/'*  Here  is  a  new 
word  introduced,  the  word  "  unconditionally ;"  of  which 
we  look  in  vain  for  any  direct  explanation,  but  which 
needs  it  as  much  as  either  of  the  words  which  it  is  em- 
ployed to  explain.     In  the  Essay  itself,  this  is  the  only 

that  an  Infinite  Being  may  have  attributes  which  are  absolute,  but  not 
infinite,  still  appears  to  me  maintainable.     But  as  it  is  immaterial  to  my 
argument,  and  was  only  the  illustration  nearest  at  hand  of  the  meanin'j- 
of  the  terms,  I  withdraw  it  from  the  discussion. 
*  Discussions,  p.  13. 


SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN.  51 

attempt  made  to  define  the  Absolute :  but  in  the  reprint 
Sir  W,  Hamilton  appends  the  following  note:* 

"  The  term  Absolute  is  of  a  twofold  (if  not  threefold) 
"  ambiguity,  corresponding  to  the  double  (or  treble)  sig- 
"  nification  of  the  word  in  Latin."  The  third  applica- 
tion he,  with  reason,  dismisses,  as  here  irrelevant.  The 
other  two  are  as  follows  : 

"  1.  Absolutum  means  what  is  freed  or  loosed :  in 
"  which  sense  the  Absolute  will  be  what  is  aloof  from 
"  relation,  comparison,  limitation,  condition,  dependence, 
"  &c.,  and  thus  is  tantamount  to  to  tnroXvrov  of  the  lower 
"  Greeks.  In  this  meaning  the  Absolute  is  not  opposed 
"  to  the  Infinite."  This  is  an  amplification  of  my  third 
meanintj. 

"  2.  Absolutum  vae^ins,  finished,  perfected,  completed;  in 
"  which  sense  the  Absolute  will  be  what  is  out  oi 
"  relation,  &c.  as  finished,  perfect,  complete,  total,  and 
"  thus  corresponds  to  to  o\ov  and  to  teXhov  of  Aristotle. 
"  In  this  acceptation — and  it  is  that  in  which  for  myself 
"  I  exclusively  use  it, — the  Absolute  is  diametrically 
"  opposed  to,  is  contradictory  of,  the  Infinite."  This 
second  meaning  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  which  I,  in  the 
first  edition,  by  a  blameable  inadvertence,  confounded 
with  my  own  first  meaning,!  must  be  reckoned  as  a 
fifth,  compounded  of  the  first  and  third — of  the  idea  of 
finished  or  completed,  and  the  idea  of  being  out  of  rela- 
tion. How  to  make  an  intelligible  meaning  out  of  the 
two  combined,  is  the  question.  One  can,  with  some 
diflBculty,  find  a  meaning  in  being  "  aloof  from  relation, 
"  comparison,  limitation,  condition,  dependence ;"  but 
what  is  meant  by  being  all  this  "  as  finishpd,  perfect, 
"  complete,  total  ?"  Does  it  mean,  being  dot/i  out  of  rela- 
tion and  also  complete  ?  and  must  the  Absolute  in  Sir 


*  Discussions,  p.  14,  note, 
f  And,  in  conseqnence,  erroneously  charged  Sir  W,  Hamilton  with 
having,  in  one  of  his  arguments  against  Cousin,  departed  from  his  own 
meaning  of  the  term.  I  have  freed  the  text  from  everything  which  de- 
pended on  this  error,  the  only  serious  misrepresention  of  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton which  has  been  established  against  me. 

£  2 


52  SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN. 

W.  Hamilton's  second  sense  be  also  Absolute  in  his 
first,  and  be  out  of  all  relation  whatever  ?  or  does  the 
particle  "«<?"  signify  tliat  it  is  out  of  relation  only  in 
in  respect  of  its  completeness,  which  (I  suppose)  means 
that  it  does  not  depend  for  its  completeness  on  anything 
but  itself?  Mr.  Hansel's  comment,  which  otherwise 
does  not  help  us  much,  decides  for  the  latter.  "  Out  of 
"  relation  as  completed"  means  (he  says*)  "  self-existent 
"  in  its  completeness,  and  not  implying  the  existence  of 
"  anything  else."t  Without  further  attempt  to  clear  up 
the  obscurity,  let  it  suffice  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
Absolute,  though  not  synonymous  with  a  "  finished, 
perfected,  completed,"  but  limited,  whole,  includes  that 
idea,  and  is  therefore  incompatible  with  Infinite.  J 

Having  premised  these  verbal  explanations,  I  proceed 
to  state,  as  far  as  possible  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  own 
words,  the  heads  of  his  argumentation  to  prove  that  the 
Absolute  and  Infinite  are  unknowable.  His  first 
summary  statement  of  the  doctrine  is  as  follows  :§ — 

"  The  unconditionally  unlimited,  or  the  Infinite,  the 
"unconditionally  limited,  or  the  Absolute,  cannot  posi- 
"  tively  be  construed  to  the  mind  :  they  can  be  conceived 
"  only  by  a  thinking  away  from,  or  abstraction  of,  those 
"  very  conditions  under  which  thought  itself  is  realized  ; 
"  consequently,  the  notion  of  the  Unconditioned  is  only 
"  negative ;  negative  of  the  conceivable  itself.  For 
"  example  :  On  the  one  hand,  we  can  positively  conceive 

*  Mansel,  p.  104 

■f"  But  the  assimilation  with  rd  o\ov  and  to  reXeiov  again  throws  us  out ; 
for  TO  okov,  with  all  Greek  thinkers,  meant  either  the  completed  aggregate 
of  all  that  exists,  or  an  abstract  entity  which  they  conceived  as  the  Prin- 
ciple of  Wholeness — in  virtue  of  which,  and  by  participation  in  which, 
that  universal  aggregate  and  all  other  wholes  are  wholes.  Either  of  these 
would  be  an  additional  meaning  for  the  word  Absolute,  different  from  all 
which  have  yet  been  mentioned. 

X  I  demur,  however,  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  assertion,  that  for  himself  he 
exclusively  uses  the  term  in  this  meaning.  In  the  whole  of  the  discussion 
respectingtherelativityof  our  knowledge,  Absolute,  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
is  simply  the  opposite  of  relative,  and  contains  no  implication  of  "  finished, 
perfected,  completed."  Moreover,  in  this  very  Essay,  when  arguing  against 
M.  Cousin,  who  uses  Absolute  in  a  sense  compatible  with  Infinite,  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  continually  falls  into  M.  Cousin's  sense. 
§  Discussions,  p.  lo. 


SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST   COUSIN.  53 

"  neither  an  absolute  whole,  that  is,  a  whole  so  great 
"  that  we  cannot  also  conceive  it  as  a  relative  part  of  a 
"  still  greater  whole ;  nor  an  absolute  part,  that  is,  a  part 
"  so  small  that  we  cannot  also  conceive  it  as  a  relative 
"  whole  divisible  into  smaller  parts.  On  the  other  hand, 
"  we  cannot  positively  represent,  or  realize,  or  construe 
"  to  the  mind  (as  here  Understanding  and  Imagination 
"  coincide)  an  infinite  whole,  for  this  could  only  be  done 
"  by  the  infinite  synthesis  in  thought  of  finite  wholes, 
"  which  would  itself  require  an  infinite  time  for  its 
"accomplishment;  nor,  for  the  same  reason,  can  we 
"  follow  out  in  thought  an  infinite  divisibility  of  parts. 
"  The  result  is  the  same,  whether  we  apply  the  process 
"  to  limitation  in  space,  in  time,  or  in  degree.  The  un- 
"  conditional  negation,  and  the  unconditional  afl&rmation 
"  of  limitation  ;  in  other  words,  the  Infinite  and  the 
"  Absolute  properly  so  called,  are  thus  equally  incon- 
"  ceivable  to  us." 

This  argument,  that  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute  are 
unknowable  by  us  because  the  only  conceptions  we  are 
able  to  form  of  them  are  negative,  is  stated  still  more 
emphatically  a  few  pages  later.*  "  Kant  has  clearly 
"  shown,  that  the  Idea  of  the  Unconditioned  can  have 
"  no  objective  realit}', — that  it  conveys  no  knowledge, — 
"  and  that  it  involves  the  most  insoluble  contradictions. 
"  But  he  ought  to  have  shown  that  the  Unconditioned 
"  had  no  objective  application,  because  it  had,  in  fact,  no 
"  subjective  affirmation ;  that  it  afibrded  no  real  know- 
"  ledge,  because  it  contained  nothing  even  conceivable  ; 
"  and  that  it  is  self-contradictory,  because  it  is  not  a 
"  notion,  either  simple  or  positive,  but  only  a  fasciculus  of 
"  negations — negations  of  the  Conditioned  in  its  opposite 
"  extremes,  and  bound  together  merely  by  the  aid  of 
"  language,  and  their  common  character  of  iucompre- 
*  hensibility." 

Let  us  note,  then,  as  the  first  and  most  fundamental 
of  Sir  VV.  Hamilton's  arguments,  that  our  ideas  of  the 
Infinite  and  the  Absolute  are  purely  negative,  and  the 

*  Discussions,  p.  17. 


54  SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN. 

Unconditioned  which  combines  the  two,  "  a  fasciculus  of 
negations."  I  reserve  consideration  of  the  validity  of 
this  and  every  other  part  of  the  argumentation^  until  we 
have  the  whole  before  us.     He  proceeds  :* — 

"  As  the  conditionally  limited  (which  we  may  briefly 
"  call  the  Conditioned)  is  thus  the  only  possible  object  of 
"  knowledge  and  of  positive  thought, — thought  neces- 
"  sarily  supposes  condition.  To  iJdnk  is  to  condition ;  and 
"  conditional  limitation  is  the  fundamental  law  of  the 
"  possibility  of  thought.  For,  as  the  greyhound  cannot 
"  outstrip  his  shadow,  nor  (by  a  more  appropriate  simile) 
"  the  eagle  outsoar  the  atmosphere  in  which  he  floats, 
"  and  by  which  alone  he  is  supported ;  so  the  mind 
"  cannot  transcend  that  sphere  of  limitation,  within  and 
"  through  which  exclusively  the  possibility  of  thought 
"  is  realized.  Thought  is  only  of  the  conditioned ;  be- 
"  cause,  as  we  have  said,  to  think  is  simply  to  condition^ 
"  The  Absolute  is  conceived  merely  by  a  negation  of  con- 
"  ceivability ;  and  all  that  we  know,  is  known  as — 

"  Won  from  the  cold  and  formless  Infinite." 

"  How,  indeed,  it  could  ever  be  doubted  that  thought 
"  is  only  of  the  conditioned,  may  well  be  deemed  a 
"  matter  of  the  profoundest  admiration.  Thought  cannot 
"  transcend  consciousness  ;  consciousness  is  only  possible 
"  under  the  antithesis  of  a  subject  and  object  of  thought 
"  known  only  in  correlation,  and  mutually  limiting  each 
"  other ;  while,  independently  of  this,  all  that  we  know 
"  either  of  subject  or  object,  either  of  mind  or  matter, 
"  is  only  a  knowledge  in  each  of  the  particular,  of  the 
"  plural,  of  the  ditterent,  of  the  modified,  of  the  pha^no- 
"  menal.  We  admit  that  the  consequence  of  this  doc- 
"  trine  is — that  philosophy,  if  viewed  as  more  than  a 
"  science  of  the  conditioned,  is  impossible.  Departing 
"  from  the  particular,  we  admit  that  we  can  never,  in 
"  our  highest  generalizations,  rise  above  the  Finite  ;  that 
"  our  knowledge,  whether  of  mind  or  matter,  can  be 
"  nothing  more  than  a  knowledge  of  the  relative  mani- 

*  Discussions,  p.  13. 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN.  55 

"  festations  of  an  existence  which  in  itself  it  is  our 
"  highest  wisdom  to  recognise  as  beyond  the  reach  of 
"  philosophy.  This  is  what,  in  the  language  of  St. 
"  Austin,  Cognoscendo  ignoratur,  et  ignoratione  cognoscitur.'^ 

The  dictum  that  "to  think  is  to  condition"  (the 
meaning  of  which  will  be  examined  hereafter)  may  be 
noted  as  our  author's  second  argument.  And  here  ends 
the  positive  part  of  his  argumentation.  There  remains 
his  refutation  of  opponents.  After  an  examination  of 
Schelling's  opinion,  into  which  1  need  not  follow  him,  he 
grapples  with  M.  Cousin,  against  whom  he  undertakes  to 
show,*  that  "  his  argument  to  prove  the  correality  of  his 
"  three  Ideas  proves  directly  the  reverse ;"  "  that  the 
"  conditions  under  which  alone  he  allows  intelligence  to 
"  be  possible,  necessarily  exclude  the  possibility  of  a 
"  knowledge,  not  to  say  a  conception,  of  the  Absolute  ;" 
and  "that  the  Absolute,  as  defined  by  him,  is  only  a  re- 
"  lative  and  a  conditioned."  Of  this  argument  in  three 
parts,  if  we  pass  over  (or,  as  our  author  would  say,  dis- 
count) as  much  as  is  only  ad  hominem,  what  is  of  general 
application  is  as  follows : — 

JFirst :  M.  Cousin  and  our  author  are  agreed  that 
there  can  be  no  knowledge  except  "  where  there  exists  a 
plurality  of  terms ;"  there  are  at  least  a  perceived  and 
a  perceiver,  a  knower  and  a  known.  But  this  necessity 
of  "  difference  and  plurality"  as  a  condition  of  know- 
ledge, is  inconsistent  with  the  meaning  of  the  Absolute, 
which  "  as  absolutely  universal,  is  absolutely  one.  Ab- 
"  solute  unity  is  convertible  with  the  absolute  negation 

"  of  plurality  and  difference The  condition 

"  of  the  Absolute  as  existing,  and  under  which  it  must 
"  be  known,  and  the  condition  of  intelligence,  as  capable 
"  of  knowing,  are  incompatible.  For,  if  we  suppose  the 
"  Absolute  cognizable  :  it  must  be  identified  either— -1°, 
"  with  the  subject  knowing :  or,  2°,  with  the  object 
"  known ;  or,  3°,  with  the  indifference  of  both.  The 
"  first  hypothesis,  and  the  second,  are  contradictory  of 
"  the  Absolute.     For  in  these  the  Absolute  is  supposed 

*  Discussions,  p.  25. 


56  SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON'    AGAINST    COUSIN. 

"  to  be  known,  either  as  contradistinguished  from  the 
"  knowing  subject,  or  as  contradistinguished  from  the 
*'  object  known  :  in  other  words,  the  Absolute  is  asserted 
"  to  be  known  as  absolute  unity,  i.e.,  as  the  negation  of 
"  all  plurality,  while  the  very  act  by  which  it  is  known, 
"  affirms  plurality  as  the  condition  of  its  own  possibility, 
"  The  third  hypothesis,  on  the  other  hand,  is  contradic- 
"  tory  of  the  plurality  of  intelligence ;  for  if  the  subject 
"  and  the  object  of  consciousness  be  known  as  one,  a 
"  pluralit}^  of  terms  is  not  the  necessary  condition  of 
~  "  intelligence.  The  alternative  is  therefore  necessary : 
"  either  the  Absolute  cannot  be  known  or  conceived  at 
"  all;  or  our  author  is  wrong  in  subjecting  thought  to 
"  the  conditions  of  plurality  and  difference."* 

Secondly :  Jn  order  to  make  the  Absolute  knowable 
by  us,  M.  Cousin,  says  the  author,  is  obliged  to  present 
it  in  the  light  of  an  absolute  cause  :  now  causation  is  a 
relation  ;  therefore  M.  Cousin's  Absolute  is  but  a  relative. 
Moreover,  "  what  exists  merely  as  a  cause,  exists  merely 
"  for  the  sake  of  something  else — is  not  final  in  itself, 
"  but  simply  a  mean  towards  an  end.  .  ,  .  Abstractly 
"  considered,  the  effect  is  therefore  superior  to  the  cause." 
Hence  an  absolute  cause  "  is  dependent  on  the  effect  for 
"  its  perfection  ;"  and,  indeed,  "  even  for  its  reality.  For 
"  to  what  extent  a  thing  exists  necessarily  as  a  cause,  to 
"  that  extent  it  is  not  all-suf&cient  to  itself;  since  to  that 
"  extent  it  is  dependent  on  the  effect,  as  on  the  condition 
"  through  wliicii  it  realizes  its  existence ;  and  what 
"  exists  absolutely  as  a  cause,  exists  therefore  in  abso- 
"  lute  dependence  on  the  effect  for  the  reality  of  its 
"  existence.  An  absolute  cause,  in  truth,  only  exists  in  its 
"  effects :  it  never  is,  it  always  becomes :  for  it  is  an  exis- 
"  tence  in  potentia,  and  not  an  existence  in  actu,  except 
"  through  and  by  its  effects.  The  Absolute  is  thus,  at 
"  best,  something  merely  inchoative  and  imperfect."! 

*  Discussions,  pp.  32,  33. 
t  Discussions,  pp.  34,  33.  In  the  first  edition  three  points  of  our  author's 
argument  were  discussed,  instead  of  two  only :  but  I  now  perceive  that 
the  remaining  argument  is  ad  hominem  merely,  and  has  reference  to  M. 
Cousin's  confusion  of  the  Absolute  with  the  Infinite. 


SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN.  57 

Let  me  ask,  en  passant,  why  M.  Cousin  is  under  an 
obligation  to  think  that  if  the  Absolute,  or,  to  speak 
plainly,  if  God,  is  only  known  to  us  in  the  character  of 
a  cause,  he  must  therefore  "  exist  merely  as  a  cause," 
and  be  merely  "  a  mean  towards  an  end  ?"  It  is  surely 
possible  to  maintain  that  the  Deity  is  known  to  us  only 
as  he  who  feeds  the  ravens,  without  supposing  that  the 
Divine  IntelHgence  exists  solely  in  order  that  the  ravens 
may  be  fed.* 

*  A  passage  follows,  which  being  only  directed  against  a  special  doctrine 
of  M.  Cousin,  (that  God  is  determined  to  create  by  the  necessity  of  his 
own  nature — that  an  absolute  creative  force  cannot  but  pass  into  creative 
activity) — I  should  have  left  unmentioned,  were  it  not  worth  notice  as  a 
specimen  of  the  kind  of  arguments  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  can  sometimes 
use.  On  M.  Cousin's  hypothesis,  says  our  author,  (p.  36) — "  One  of  two 
"  alternatives  must  be  admitted.  God,  as  necessarily  determined  to  pass 
"  from  absolute  essence  to  relative  manifestation,  is  determined  to  pass 
"  either  from  the  better  to  the  worse,  or  from  the  worse  to  the  better.  A 
"  third  possibility,  that  both  states  are  equal,  as  contradictory  in  itself  and 
'■  as  contradicted  by  our  author,  it  is  not  necessary  to  consider.  The  jirst 
"  supposition  must  be  rejected.  The  necessity  in  this  case  determines 
"  God  to  pass  from  the  better  to  the  worse,  that  is,  operates  to  his  partial 
"  annihilation.  The  power  which  compels  this  must  be  external  and  hostile, 
"  for  nothing  operates  willingly  to  its  own  deLerioration ;  and  as  superior 
"  to  the  pretended  God,  is  either  itseli:  the  real  deity,  if  an  intelligent  and 
"  free  cause,  or  a  negation  of  all  deity,  if  a  blind  force  or  fate.  The  second 
"  is  equally  inadmissible :  that  God,  passing  into  the  universe,  passes  from 
"  a  state  of  comparative  imperfection  into  a  state  of  comparative  perfection. 
"  The  divine  nature  is  identical  with  the  most  perfect  nature,  and  is  also 
"  identical  with  the  first  cause.  If  the  first  cause  be  not  identical  with 
"  the  most  perfect  nature,  there  is  no  God,  for  the  two  essential  conditions 
*'  of  his  existence  are  not  in  combination.  N  ow,  on  the  present  supposition, 
"  the  most  perfect  nature  is  the  derived ;  nay,  the  universe,  the  creation, 
"  the  yivofievov,  is,  in  relation  to  its  cause,  the  actual,  the  ovraa  ov.  It  would 
"  also  be  the  divine,  but  that  divinity  supposes  also  the  notion  of  cause, 
''  while  the  universe,  ex  hypothesi,  is  only  an  effect." 

This  curious  subtlety,  that  creation  must  be  either  passing  from  the 
better  to  the  worse  or  from  the  worse  to  the  better  (which,  if  true,  would 

Erove  that  God  cannot  have  created  anything  unless  from  all  eternity)  can 
e  likened  to  nothing  but  the  Eleatic  argument  that  motion  is  impossible, 
because  if  a  body  moves  it  must  either  move  where  it  is  or  where  it  is  not ; 
an  argument,  by  the  way,  for  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  often  expresses 
high  respect ;  and  of  which  he  has  here  produced  a  very  successful  imita- 
tion. It  it  were  worth  whUe  expending  serious  argument  upon  such  a 
curiosity  of  dialectics,  one  might  say  it  assumes  that  whatever  is  now  worse 
must  always  have  been  worse,  and  that  whatever  is  now  better  must  always 
have  been  better.  For,  on  the  opposite  supposition,  perfect  wisdom  would 
have  begun  to  wiU  the  new  state  at  the  precise  moment  when  it  began  to 
be  better  than  the  old.  We  may  add  that  our  author's  argument,  though 
never  so  irrefragable,  in  no  way  avails  him  against  M.  Cousin ;  for  (as  he 
has  himself  said,  only  a  sentence  before)  on  M.  Cousin's  theory  the  uni- 


58  SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN. 

fn  reviewing  the  series  of  arguments  adduced  by  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  for  the  incognoscibility  and  inconceivability 
of  the  Absolute,  the  first  remark  that  occurs  is,  that  most 
of  them  lose  their  application  by  simply  substituting  for 
the  metaphysical  abstraction  "  The  Absolute,"  the  more 
intelligible  concrete  expression  "Something  Absolute.' 
If  the  first  phrase  has  any  meaning,  it  must  be  capable 
of  being  expressed  in  terms  of  the  other.  W  hen  we  are 
told  of  an  "  Absolute"  in  the  abstract,  or  of  an  Abso- 
lute Being,  even  though  called  God,  we  are  entitled, 
and  if  we  would  know  what  we  are  talking  about,  are 
bound  to  ask,  absolute  in  what?  Do  you  mean,  for  ex- 
ample, absolute  in  goodness,  or  absolute  in  knowledge  ?  or 
do  you,  perchance,  mean  absolute  in  ignorance,  or  absolute 
in  wickedness  ?  lor  any  one  of  these  is  as  much  an  Ab- 
solute as  any  other.  And  when  you  talk  of  something 
in  the  abstract  which  is  called  the  Absolute,  does  it  mean 
one,  or  more  than  one,  of  these?  or  does  it,  peradventure, 
mean  all  of  them  ?  When  (descending  to  a  less  lofty 
height  of  abstraction)  we  speak  ot  The  Horse,  we  UiCan 
to  include  every  object  of  which  the  name  horse  can 
be  predicated.  Or,  to  take  our  examples  from  the  same 
region  of  thought  to  which  the  controversy  belongs — 

verse  can  never  have  had.  a  beginning,  and  God,  therefore,  never  was  in 
the  dilemma  supposed. 

[Un  this  Mr.  iMansel  remarks  (p.  107),  "  Hamilton  is  not  speaking  of 
"  states  of  things,  but  of  states  of  the  divine  nature,  as  creative  or  not 
"  creative  :  and  Mr.  Mill's  argument,  to  refute  Hamilton,  must  suppose  a 
"  time  when  the  new  nature  of  God  begins  to  be  better  than  the  old." 
This  is  not  a  happy  specimen  of  Mr.  Mansel's  powers  of  confutation.  Jf 
God  made  the  universe  at  the  precise  moment  when  it  was  wisest  and 
best  to  do  so — and  if  the  universe  was  made  by  a  perfectly  wise  and  good 
being,  this  must  have  been  the  case — who  besides  Mr.  Manse),  or,  accord- 
ing to  hmi,  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  would  assert  that  God,  in  doing  so,  acquired 
anew  natui'e?  or  passed  out  of  one  state  into  another  state  ot  his  own 
nature?  Did  he  not  simply  remain  in  the  state  of  pertect  wisdom  and. 
goodness  in  which  he  was  before  ? 

Mr.  Mansel  makes  the  odd  assertion,  that  this  argument  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  is  taken  from  Plato.  There  is  very  little  in  common  between 
it  and  the  passage  in  the  .Republic  in  which  Socrates,  to  disprove  the 
fabulous  metamorphoses  of  the  gods  into  the  forms  of  men,  animals,  or 
inanimate  things,  argues  that  no  being  would,  voluntarily  change  itself 
from  better  to  worse.  I  cannot  be  mistaken  in  the  passage  of  Plato 
which  Mr.  Mansel  has  in  view,  for  he  had  himself  cited  a  part  of  it,  with 
the  same  intention,  in  the  notes  to  his  Bampton  Lectures  (p.  2uy.)J 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN.  59 

when  The  True  or  The  Beautiful  are  spoken  of,  the 
phrase  is  meant  to  include  all  things  whatever  that  are 
true,  or  all  things  whatever  that  are  beautiful.*  if  this 
rule  is  good  for  other  abstractions,  it  is  good  for  the 
Absolute.  The  word  is  devoid  of  meaning  unless  in 
reference  to  predicates  of  some  sort.  What  is  absolute 
must  be  absolutely  something;  absolutely  this  or  ab- 
solutely that.  The  Absolute,  then,  ought  to  be  a 
genus  comprehending  whatever  is  absolutely  anything — 
whatever  possesses  any  predicate  in  finished  completeness. 
If  we  are  told  therefore  that  there  is  some  one  Being 
who  is,  or  which  is,  The  Absolute — not  something  abso- 
lute, but  the  Absolute  itself, — the  proposition  can  be 
understood  in  no  other  sense  than  that  the  supposed 
Being  possesses  in  absolute  completeness  all  predicates ; 
is  absolutely  good,  and  absolutely  bad;  absolutely  wise, 
and  absolutely  stupid ;  and  so  forth. f    The  conception  o.f 

*  Mr.  Mansel  (pp.  108,  109)  considers  this  sentence  a  curious  specimeu 
of  my  reading  in  philosophy,  and  informs  me  that  "  Plato  expressly  dis- 
"  tinguishes  between  *  the  beautiful '  and  '  things  that  are  beautif  1 '  as 
"  the  One  in  contrast  to  the  Many — the  Real  in  contrast  to  the  Apparent." 
Mr.  Mansel  will  doubtless  be  glad  to  hear  that  I  already  possessed  the 
very  elementary  knowledge  of  Plato  which  he  seeks  to  impart  to  mt- ; 
indeed  (if  it  were  of  any  consequence)  1  have  elsewhere  given  an  account 
of  this  theory  of  Plato,  and  made  the  excuses  which  may  justly  be  made 
for  such  a  doctrine  in  Plato's  time.  But  to  recognise  it  as  a  theory  whicli 
it  is  necessary  to  take  into  consideration  now,  is  to  follow  the  example  of 
the  later  German  transcendentalists  in  putting  philosophy  back  to  its  very 
incunahida. 

t  The  "  Inquirer"  objects,  that  merely  negative  predicates  should  be 
excludexl  from  the  account;  and  that  many  of  those  here  mentioned  are 
merely  negative  :  absolute  littleness  being  but  the  negation  of  greatness; 
weakness,  ot  strength;  folly,  of  wisdom;  evil,  of  good  (p.  22).  But 
(without  meddling  with  the  very  disputable  position,  that  all  bad  qualities 
are  merely  deficiency  of  good  ones)  the  question  is,  not  whether  the 
qualities  which  the  "  Inquirer"  enumerates  are  negative,  but  whether 
they  are  capable  of  being  predicated  as  absolute.  If  they  are,  the  general 
or  abstract  Absolute  logically  includes  them.  And,  surely,  negations  are 
still  more  susceptible  of  being  absolute  than  positive  qualities.  The 
"  Inquirer"  will  hardly  deny  that  "  absolutely  none"  is  as  correct  an  em- 
ployment of  the  word  absolute  as  "  absolutely  all."  With  regard  to 
lutiuite,  the  same  writer  says,  "  To  talk  of  infinite  littleness — infinite  non- 
"  extension  or  non-duration— is  to  talk  of  infinite  nothing.  Which  is 
"  indeed  to  talk,  we  must  not  say  infinite,  but  absolute  nonsense."  It  is 
hardly  fair  to  refer  a  pupil  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  to  mathematics ;  but 
the  "Inquirer"  might  have  learnt  from  Sir  W.  Hamilton  himself  that  it 
is  not  nonsense  to  talk  of  infinitely  small  quantities. 


60  SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN. 

such  a  being,  I  will  not  say  of  such  a  God,  is  worse  than 
a  "  fasciculus  of  negations ;"  it  is  a  fasciculus  of  con- 
tradictions :  and  our  author  might  have  spared  himself 
the  trouble  of  proving  a  thing  to  be  unknowable,  which 
cannot  be  spoken  of  but  in  words  implying  the  impos- 
sibility of  its  existence.  To  insist  on  such  a  truism  is 
not  superfluous,  for  there  have  been  philosophers  who 
saw  that  this  must  be  the  meaning  of  "  The  Absolute," 
and  yet  accepted  it  as  a  reality.  "  What  kind  of  an 
"  Absolute  Being  is  that,"  asked  Hegel,*  "  which  does 
"  not  contain  in  itself  all  that  is  actual,  even  evil 
"included?"  Undoubtedly:  and  it  is  therefore  neces- 
sary to  admit,  either  that  there  is  no  Absolute  Being,  or 
that  the  law,  that  contradictory  propositions  cannot  both 
be  true,  does  not  apply  to  the  Absolute.  Hegel  chose 
the  latter  side  of  the  alternative ;  and  by  this,  among 
other  things,  has  fairly  earned  the  honour  which  will 
probably  be  awarded  to  him  by  posterity,  of  having  logi- 
cally extinguished  transcendental  metaphysics  by  a  series 
of  reductiones  ad  absurdissimum. 

What  I  have  said  of  the  Absolute  is  true,  mutatis 
mutandis,  of  the  Infinite.  This  also  is  a  phrase  of  no 
meaning,  except  in  reference  to  some  particular  predi- 
cate; it  must  mean  the  infinite  in  something — as  in 
size,  in  duration,  or  in  power.  These  are  intelligible 
conceptions.  But  an  abstract  Infinite,  a  Being  not 
merely  infinite  in  one  or  in  several  attributes,  but  which 
is  "  The  Infinite"  itself,  must  be  not  only  infinite  in 
greatness,  but  also  in  littleness ;  its  duration  is  not  only 
infinitely  long,  but  infinitely  short;  it  is  not  only 
infinitely  awful,  but  infinitely  contemptible;  it  is  the 
same  mass  of  contradictions  as  its  companion  the  Abso- 
lute. There  is  no  need  to  prove  that  neither  of  them 
is  knowable,  since,  if  the  universal  law  of  Belief  is  of 
objective  validity,  neither  of  them  exists. 

It  is  these  unmeaning  abstractions,  however,  these 
muddles  of  self-contradiction,  which  alone  our  author  has 
proved,  against  Cousin  and  others,  to  be  unknowable. 

*  Quoted  by  Mr.  Mausel,  "  The  Limits  of  Religious  Thought,"  p.  30. 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST   COUSIN.  61 

He  has  shown,  without  difficulty,  that  we  cannot  know 
The  Infinite  or  The  Absolute.  He  has  not  shown  that 
we  cannot  know  a  concrete  reality  as  infinite  or  as  abso- 
lute. Applied  to  this  latter  thesis,  his  reasoninfj  breaks 
down. 

We  have  seen  his  principal  argument,  the  one  on  which 
he  substantially  relies.  It  is,  that  the  Infinite  and  the  / 
Absolute  are  unknowable  because  inconceivable,  and  in-  ^ 
conceivable  because  the  only  notions  we  can  have  of  them  ' 
are  purely  negative.  If  he  is  risfht  in  his  antecedent, 
the  consequent  follows.  A  conception  made  up  of  nega-  I 
tions  is  a  conception  of  Nothing.  It  is  not  a  conception  \ 
at  all.  „ 

But  is  a  conception,  by  the  fact  of  its  being  a  con-  coJ^ ! 
ception  of  something  infinite,  reduced  to  a  negation  ?  ew^**^ 
This  is  quite  true  of   the  senseless    abstraction   "The         I  i  ( 
Infinite."     That  indeed  is  purely  negative,  being  formed  ^^  v^ 
by  excluding  from  the  concrete  conceptions  classed  under 
it,  all  their  positive    elements.     But  in  place  of  "  the  i 

Infinite,"  put  the  idea  of  Something  infinite,  and  the 
argument  collapses  at  once.     "  Something  infinite"  is  a  i 

conception  which,  like  most  of  our  complex  ideas,  con- 
tains a  negative  element,  but  which  contains  positive         ' 
elements  also.     Infinite  space,  for  instance  :  is  there  no-         I 
thing  positive  in  that?     The  negative  part  of  this  con-  ' 

ception  is  the  absence  of  bounds.     The  positive  are,  the 
idea  of  space,  and  of  space  greater  than  any  finite  space.         j 
So  of  infinite  duration  :  so  far  as  it  signifies  "  without 
end"  it  is  only  known  or  conceived  negatively ;   but  in 
so  far  as  it  means  time,  and  time  longer  than  any  given 
time,  the  conception   is  positive.     The   existence  of  a 
negative  element  in  a  conception  does  not  make  the  con- 
ception itself  negative  and  a  non-entity.     It  would  sur- 
prise most  people  to  be  told  that  "  the  life  eternal"  is  a 
purely  negative  conception  ;  that  immortality  is  incon- 
ceivable.    Those  who  hope  for  it  for  themselves  have  S 
very  positive  conception  of  what  they  hope  for.     True 
we  cannot  have  an  adequate  conception  of  space  or  dura- 
tion as  infinite  ;  but  between  a  conception  which  though 


SIR    VVILMAM    HAMILTON   AGAINST   COUSIN. 


inadequate  is  real,  and  correct  as  far  as  it  goes,  and  the 
impossibility  of  any  conception,  tliere  is  a  wide  difference. 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  does   not  admit  this  diflerence.     He 
thinks  the  distinction  without  meaning:.    "  To  say*  that 
*'  the   infinite    can    be    thought,  but  only  inadequately 
"  thought,  is  a  contradiction  in  adjecio  ;  it  is  the  same  as 
"  saying  that  the  infinite  can  be  known,  but  only  known 
"  as  finite."     I  answer,  that  to  know  it  as  greater  than 
anything  finite  is  not  to  know  it  as  finite.    The  conception 
of  Infinite  as  that  which  is  greater  than  any  given  quan- 
»^   tity,  is  a  conception  we  all  possess,  sufficient  for  all  human 
purposes,  and  as  genuine  and  good  a  positive  conception 
as  one  need  wish  to  have.     It  is  not  adequate  ;  our  con- 
ception  of  a  reality  never  is.     But  it  is  positive ;  and 
the  assertion  that  there  is  nothing  positive  in  the  idea 
of  infinity  can   only  be  maintained  by  leaving  out  and 
ignoring,  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  invariably  does,  the  very 
element  which  constitutes  the  idea.     Considering  how 
many  recondite  laws  of  physical  nature,  afterwards  veri- 
fied by  experience,  have  been    arrived   at  by  trains   of 
mathematical  reasoning  grounded    on  what,  if  Sir  AV. 
Hamilton's  doctrine  be  correct,    is  a  non-existent  con- 
ception, one  would  be  obliged  to  suppose  that  conjuring 
is  a  highly  successful  mode  of  the  investigation  of  nature. 
If,  indeed,  we  trifle  by  setting  up  an  imaginary  Infinite 
which  is  infinite  in  nothing  in  particular,  our  notion  of 
it  is  truly  notliing,  and  a  "  fasciculus  of  negations."    But 
this  is  a  good  example  of  the  bewildering  effect  of  putting 
nonsensical  abstractions  in  the  place  of  concrete  realities. 
AVould  Sir  W.  Hamilton  have  said  that  the  idea  of  God 
is  but  a  negation,  or  a  fasciculus  of  negations  ?   As  having 
nothing   greater   than   himself,  he  is  indeed  conceived 
negatively.     But  as  himself  greater  than  all  other  real 
or    imaginable    existences,    the    conception    of   him  is 
positive. 

Put  Absolute  instead  of  Infinite,  and  we  come  to  the 
same  result.     "  The  Absolute,"  as  already  shown,  is  a 
heap  of  contradictions,  but  '*  absolute"  in  reference  to 
♦  Lectures,  ii.  375. 


SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON   AGAINST  COUSIN.  63 

any  given  attribute,  sisfnifies  the  possession  of  that 
attribute  in  finished  perfection  and  completeness.  A  i 
Bein^  absolute  in  knowledge,  for  example,  is  one  who 
knows,  in  the  literal  meaning  of  the  term,  everything-,  j 
AVho  will  pretend  that  this  conception  is  negative,  or 
unmeaning  to  us?  We  cannot,  indeed,  form  an  adequate 
conception  of  a  being  as  knowing  everything,  since  to  do 
this  we  must  have  a  conception,  or  mental  representa- 
tion, of  all  that  he  knows.  Bat  neither  have  we  an 
adequate  conception  of  any  parson's  finite  knowledge. 
I  have  no  adequate  conception  of  a  shoemaker's  know- 
ledge, since  I  do  not  know  how  to  make  shoes  :  but  my 
conception  of  a  shoemaker  and  of  his  knowledge  is  a 
real  conception  ;  it  is  not  a  fasciculus  of  negations.  If 
I  talk  of  an  Absolute  Being  (in  the  sense  in  which  we 
are  now  employing  the  term)  I  use  words  without  mean- 
ing; but  if  I  talk  of  a  Being  who  is  absolute  in  wisdom 
and  goodness,  that  is,  who  knows  ever3^thing,  and  at  all 
times  intends  what  is  best  for  every  sentient  creature,  T 
.understand  perfectly  what  I  mean:  and  however  much 
the  fact  may  transcend  my  conception,  the  shortcoming 
can  only  consist  in  ray  being  ignorant  of  the  details  of 
which  the  reality  is  composed  :  as  I  have  a  positive,  and 
may  have  a  correct  conception  of  the  empire  of  China, 
though  1  know  not  the  aspect  of  any  of  the  places,  nor 
the  physiognomy  of  any  of  the  human  beings,  compre- 
hended therein. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  leading  argument  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  to  prove  the  inconceivability  and  consequent 
unknowability  of  the  Unconditioned,  namely,  that  our 
conception  of  it  is  merely  negative,  holds  good  only  of 
an  abstract  Unconditioned  which  cannot  possibly  exist, 
and  not  of  a  concrete  Being,  supposed  infinite  and  abso- 
lute in  certain  definite  attributes.*  Let  us  now  see  if 
there  be  any  greater  value  in  his  other  arguments. 

*  The  answer  of  Mr.  Mansel  and  the  "  Inquirer"  to  the  preceding 
argument,  is,  that  it  confounda  the  infinite  with  the  indefinite.  They 
could  not  have  understood  the  argument  worse  if  they  had  never  read  it. 
Indefinite,  in  its  ordinary  acceptation,  is  that  which  has  a  limit,  but  a 
limit  either  variable  in  itself,  or  unknown  to  us.     Infinite  is  that  which 


64  SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON   AGAINST   COUSIN. 

The  first  of  them  is,  that  all  knowledge  is  of  things 
plural  and  different ;  that  a  thing  is  only  known  to  us 
by  being  known  as  different  from  something  else  ;  from 
ourselves  as  knowing^  it,  and  also  from  other  known  things 
which  are  not  it.  Here  we  have  at  length  something 
which  the  mind  can  rest  on  as  a  fundamental  truth.  It 
is  one  of  the  profound  psychological  observations  which 
the  world  owes  to  Hobbes ;  it  is  fully  recognised  both 
by  M.  Cousin  and  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  ;  and  it  has,  more 
recentl)^  been  admirably  illustrated  and  applied  by  Mr. 
Bain  and  by  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.  That  to  know  a  thing 
is  to  distinguish  it  from  other  things,  is,  as  I  formerly 
remarked,  one  of  the  truths  which  the  very  ambiguous 
expression  "  the  relativity  of  human  knowledge"  has 
been  employed  to  denote.  With  tliis  doctrine  I  have 
no  quarrel.  But  Sir  W.  Hamilton  proceeds  to  argue 
that  the  Absolute,  being  "  absolutely  One^"  cannot  be 
known  under  the  conditions  of  plurality  and  difference, 

has  no  limit.  In  -wiiat  Mr.  Mansel  calls  the  metaphysical  use  of  the  word 
indefinite,  he  affirms  it  (p.  114)  to  mean  "  indefinitely  increasable."  Else- 
where (p.  50)  he  says  "  An  indefinite  time  is  that  which  is  capable  of  per- 
"  petual  addition  :  an  infinite  time  is  one  so  great  as  to  admit  of  no 
"  addition."  I  now  ask,  which  of  these  is  the  correct  expression  for  that 
which  is  greater  than  anything  finite.  Is  this  a  property  which  can  be 
affirmed  of  anything  which  has  an  undetermined  limit  ?  or  of  anything 
which  is  indefinitely  increasable  ?  or  of  anything  which  is  capable  of 
perpetual  addition  P  Is  a  merely  indefinite  time  greater  than  every  finite 
time  ?  Is  a  merely  indefinite  space  greater  than  every  finite  space  ? 
Is  a  merely  indefinite  power  greater  than  every  finite  power  ?  The 
property  of  being  greater  than  evei'ything  finite  belongs,  and  can  belong, 
only  to  what  is  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  term,  both  popular  and  philo- 
sophical, Infinite. 

Mr.  Mansel,  in  his  rejoinder,  defends  himself  by  saying  that  Descartes 
and  Cudworth  agree  with  him  in  giving  the  name  indefinite  to  what  I 
(and  as  he  acknowledges,  the  mathematicians)  understand  by  infinite.  I 
cannot  affirm  that  Descartes  and  Cudworth  have  nowhere  done  this ;  but 
they  certainly  have  not  done  it  in  the  passages  which  Mr.  Mansel  quoted, 
either  in  his  first  reply  or  in  this.  All  that  either  Descartes  or  Cudworth 
says  in  those  passages  is  that  the  indcfiniteness,  to  our  minds,  of  the 
possible  extension  of  the  physical  universe,  is  not  tantamount  to,  nor  a 
proof  of,  its  infinity  ;  as  of  course  it  is  not. 

Mr.  Mansel  adds  that  even  supposing  me  to  be  in  the  right,  it  would 
only  follow,  not  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  wrong,  but  that  he  and  T  do  not 
mean  the  same  thing  by  the  same  term.  Whoever  has  read  the  present 
note  must,  however,  be  aware,  that  I  maintain  my  position  to  be  true  even 
in  what  Mr.  Mansel  affirms  to  be  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  meaning  of  the  term. 


SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST   COUSIN.  65 

and  as  these  are  the  acknowledged  conditions  of*  all  our  / 
knowledge,  cannot,  therefore,  be  known  at  all.     There 
is  here,  as  it  seems  to  me,  a  strange  confusion  of  ideas. 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  seems  to  mean  that,  being  absolutely 
One,  it  cannot  be  known  as  plural.     But  the  proposition 
that   plurality  is   a  condition  of  knowledge,  does   not 
mean  that  the   thing  known   must  be  known   as  itself   ^^^ 
plural.     It  means,  that  a  thing  is  only  known,  by  being 
known  as  distinguished  from  something  else.     The  plu- 
rality required  is  not  within  the  thing  itself,  but  is  made 
up  between  itself  and  other  things.     Again,  even  if  we 
concede    that  a  thing    cannot    be    known    at  all  unless ' 
known  as  plural,  does  it  follow  that  it  cannot  be  known 
as  plural  because  it  is  also  One  ?     Are  the  One  and  the 
Many,  then,   incompatible    things,   instead    of  different  ' 
aspects  of  the  same  thing?     Sir  W.  Hamilton  surely 
does  not  mean  by  Absolute  Unity,  an  indivisible  Unit; 
the  minimum,  instead  of  the  maximum  of  Beinij.     He 
must  mean,  as  M.  Cousin  certainl}^  means,  an  absolute    ^ 
Whole ;  the  Whole  which  comprehends  all  things.     If    j 
this  be  so,  does  not  this  Whole  not  only  admit  of,  but 
necessitate,  the  supposition  of  parts  ?     Is  not  an  Unity 
which  comprehends  everything,  ex  vi  termini  known  as 
a  plurality,  and  the  most  plural  of  all  pluralities,  plural 
in  an  unsurpassable  degree  ?     If  there  is  any  meaning 
in    the    words,  must  not   Absolute   Unity  be  Absolute 
Totality,   which    is   the    highest   degree   of  Plurality  ? 
There   is    no   escape    from    the  alternative:   the  Abso- 
lute either  means  a  single  atom  or  monad,  or  it  means     [ 
Plurality  in  the  extreme  degree.      ({JU  %,  'nJ-  W-  Iwvjv,  a-\  y^ 

Though  it  is  hardly  needful,  we  will  try  this  argument 
by  the  test  we  applied  to  a  previous  one;  by  substituting 
the  concrete,  God,  for  the  abstract  Absolute.  Would 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  have  said  that  God  is  not  cognizable 
under  the  condition  of  Plurality — is  not  known  as  dis- 
tinguished from  ourselves,  and  from  the  objects  in 
nature?  Call  any  positive  Thing  by  a  name  which 
expresses  only  its  negative  predicates,  and  you  may 
easily  prove  it  under  that  name  to  be  incognizable  and 


66  SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST   COUSIN. 

a  non-entity.  Give  it  back  its  full  name  (if  Mr. 
Mansel's  reverential  feelings  will  permit),  its  positive 
attributes  reappear,  and  you  find,  to  your  surprise,  that 
what  is  a  reality  can  be  known  as  one.* 

The  next  argument  is  chiefly  directed  against  the 
doctrine  of  M.  Cousin,  that  we  know  the  Absolute  as 
Absolute  Cause.  This  doctrine,  says  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
destroys  itself.  The  idea  of  a  cause  is  irreconcilable 
with  the  Absolute,  for  a  Cause  is  relative,  and  implies 
an  Effect  :  this  Absolute,  therefore,  is  not  an  Absolute 
at  all.  This  would  be  unanswerable,  if  by  the  Absolute 
we  were  obliged  to  understand  something  which  is  not 
only  "  out  of"  all  relation,  but  incapable  of  ever  passing 
into  relation.  But  is  this  what  any  one  can  possibly 
mean  by  the  Absolute,  who  identifies  it  with  the  Creator? 
Granting  that  the  Absolute  implies  an  existence  in  itself, 
standing  in  no  relation  to  anything  :  the  only  Absolute 
with  which   we   are    concerned,   or   in  which    anybody 

*  Mr.  Mansel,  as  I  have  mentioned,  vehemently  objects  to  testing  what 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  says  of  the  Infinite  by  its  applicability  to  God,  affirm- 
ing that  the  Infinite  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  speaking  of,  namely  the 
Infinite  as  we  conceive  it,  is  a  "  pseudo-infinite."  This  is  a  curious  in- 
version of  the  parts  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  of  his  critic.  It  is  I  who 
assert  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Infinite  is  a  pseudo-infinite ;  it  is  he  who 
maintains  that  it  is  the  real.  At  least  he  substitutes  this  pseudo-infinite 
which  is  really  inconceivable,  for  an  intelligible  infinite,  a  concrete  Deity, 
and  proving  the  inconceivability  of  the  one,  thinks  he  has  sufficiently 
proved  the  inconceivability  of  the  other.  It  was  his  business,  it  is  what 
he  professes,  to  prove  that  God,  considered  as  Infinite,  is  inconceivable 
by  us.  Instead  of  this,  he  proves  the  inconceivability  of  an  Infinite 
"which  is  not  and  cannot  be  God,  and  which  does  not  and  cannot  exist, 
and  leaves  it  to  Mr.  Mansel  to  discover  (after  others  have  pointed  it  out) 
that  this  is  a  pseudo-infinite. 

Mr.  Mansel  is  still  more  indignant  that  I  should  try  what  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  says  of  the  Absolute,  by  the  test  of  applicability  to  God,  and 
says  that  this  is  actually  inverting  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  meaning,  since  his 
definition  of  the  Absolute,  "  the  unconditionally  limited,"  is  contradictory 
to  the  nature  of  God.  But  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  here  arguing  with  M. 
Cousin,  who  does  not  mean  by  Absolute  the  limited,  but  the  complete, 
and  who  does  predicate  it  of  God.  As  Mr  Bolton  truly  remarks  (p.  169) 
"  In  discussing  the  doctrines  of  Schelling  and  Cousin,  Hamilton  uses  the 
'*  word  Absolute  in  conformity  with  their  usage,  according  to  which  the 
"  Infinite  and  the  Absolute  are  not  opposed,  or  contraries,  as  in  Hamil- 
"  ton's  own  terminology."  Nor  for  this  does  he  deserve  any  blame;  for 
if  the  Absolute  which  he  affirms  to  be  unknowable,  because  it  cannot  be 
known  under  the  conditions  of  Plurality,  is  Absolute  only  in  his  own 
sense  of  the  term,  and  not  in  M.  Cousin's,  he  has  not  refuted  M.  Cousin. 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN.  67 

believes,  must  not  only  be  capable  of  entering  into  rela- 
tion with  things,  but  must  be  capable  of  entering  into 
any  relation  whatever,  except  that  of  dependence,  with 
anything.     May  it  not  be  known   in  some,  at  least,  of 
those  relations,  and   particularly  in  the   relation   of  a 
Cause  ?     And  if  it  is  a  "  finished,  perfected,  completed  " 
Cause,  i.e.  the  most  a  cause  that  it  is  possible  to  be — 
the  cause  of  everything  except  itself — then,  if  known  as 
such,  it  is  known  as  an  Absolute  Cause.     Has  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  shown  that  an  Absolute  Cause,  thus  under- 
stood, is   inconceivable,  or  unknowable  ?     No :    all   he 
shows  is,  that,,  though  capable  of   being  known,  it  is 
known  relatively  to  something  else,  namely,  to  its  effects ; 
and  that  such  knowledije  of  Grod  is  not  of  God  in  him- 
self, but  of  God  in  relation  to  his  works.     The  truth  is, 
M.  Cousin's  doctrine  is  too  legitimate  a  product  of  the 
metaphysics   common    to  them  both,  to  be  capable   of 
being  refuted  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton.     For  this  knowledge 
of  God  in  and  by  his  efi'ects,  according  to  M.  Cousin,  is 
knowing  him  as  he  is  in  himself :  because  the  creative 
power  whereby  he  causes,  is  in  himself,  is  inseparable 
from  him,  and  belongs  to  his  essence.     And  as  far  as  I 
can  see,  the  principles  common  to  the  two  philosophers 
are  as  srood  a  warrant  to  M.  Cousin  for  saying  this,  as 
to  Sir  W.  Hamilton  for  maintaining  that  extension  and 
figure  are  "  essential  attributes  "  of  matter,  and  perceived 
as  such  by  intuition. 

I  have  now  examined,  with  one  exception,  every 
argument  (which  is  not  merely  ad  hominem)  advanced 
by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  to  prove  against  M.  Cousin  the 
unknowableness  of  the  Unconditioned.  The  argument 
which  I  have  reserved,  is  the  emphatic  and  oracular  one, 
that  the  Unconditioned  must  be  unthinkable,  because 
'*  to  think  is  to  condition."  I  have  kept  this  tor  the 
last,  because  it  will  occupy  us  the  longest  time :  for  we 
must  begin  by  finding  the  meaning  of  the  proposition ; ' 
which  cannot  be  done  very  briefly,  so  little  help  isj 
afforded  us  by  the  author. 

According  to  the  best  notion  I  can  form  of  the  mean- 

r  2 


68  SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN. 

ing  of  "  condition,"  either  as  a  term  of  philosophy  or  of 
common  Hfe,  it  means  that  on  which  something  else  is 
contingent,  or  (more  definitely)  which  being  given,  some- 
thing else  exists,  or  takes  place.  I  promise  to  do  some- 
thing on  condition  that  you  do  something  else :  that  is, 
if  you  do  this,  I  will  do  that ;  if  not,  I  will  do  as  I 
please.  A  Conditional  Proposition,  in  logic,  is  an  asser- 
tion in  this  form  :  "  If  so  and  so,  then  so  and  so."  The 
conditions  of  a  phsenomenon  are  the  various  antecedent 
circumstances  which,  when  they  exist  simultaneously, 
are  followed  by  its  occurrence.  As  all  these  antecedent 
circumstances  must  coexist,  each  of  them  in  relation  to 
the  others  is  a  conditio  sine  qua  non ;  i.e.  without  it  the 
phsenomenon  will  not  follow  from  the  remaining  condi- 
tions, though  it  perhaps  may  from  some  set  of  conditions 
totally  different. 

If  this  be  the  meaning  of  Condition,  the  Uncondi- 
tioned should  mean,  that  which  does  not  depend  for  its 
existence  or  its  qualities  on*  any  antecedent ;  in  other 
words,  it  should  be  synonymous  with  Uncaused.  This, 
however,  cannot  be  the  meaning  intended  by  Sir  W, 
Hamilton :  for,  in  a  passage  already  quoted  from  his 
argument  against  Cousin,  he  speaks  of  the  effect  as  a 
condition  of  its  cause.  The  condition,  therefore,  as  he 
understands  it,  needs  not  be  an  antecedent,  and  may  be 
a  subsequent  fact  to  that  which  it  conditions. 

He  appears,  indeed,  in  his  writings  generally,  to 
reckon  as  a  condition  of  a  thing,  anything  necessarily 
implied  by  it :  and  uses  the  word  Conditioned  almost 
interchangeably  with  Relative.  For  relatives  are  always 
in  pairs  :  a  term  of  relation  implies  the  existence  of  two 
things,  the  one  which  it  is  affirmed  of,  and  another : 
parent  implies  child,  greater  implies  less,  like  implies 
another  like,  and  vice  versa.  Eelation  is  an  abstract 
name  for  all  concrete  facts  w^hicli  concern  more  than  one 
object.  Wherever,  therefore,  a  relation  is  affirmed,  or 
anything  is  spoken  of  under  a  relative  name,  the  exis- 
tence of  the  correlative  may  be  called  a  condition  of  the 
relation,  as  well  as  of  the  truth  of  the  assertion.     When, 


SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON    AGAINST   COUSIN.  C,9 

accordingly,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  calls  an  effect  a  condition 
of  its  cause,  he  speaks  intelligibly,  and  the  received  use 
of  the  term  affords  him  a  certain  amount  of  justification 
for  thus  speaking. 

But,  if  the  Conditioned  means  the  Relative,  the  Un- 
conditioned must  mean  its  opposite  ;  and  in  this  accep- 
tation, the  Unconditioned  would  mean  all  Noumena;  | 
Things  in  themselves,  considered  without  reference  to 
the  effects  they  produce  in  us,  which  are  called  their 
phaenomenal  agencies  or  properties.  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
does,  very  frequently,  seem  to  use  the  term  in  this  sense. 
In  denying  all  knowledge  of  the  Unconditioned,  he  i 
often  seems  to  be  denying  any  other  than  phenomenal 
knowledge  of  Matter  or  of  Mind.  Not  only,  however, 
he  does  not  consistently  adhere  to  this  meaning,  but  it 
directly  conflicts  with  the  only  approach  he  ever  makes 
to  a  definition  or  an  explanation  of  the  term.  We  have 
seen  him  declaring  that  the  Unconditioned  is  the  genus 
of  which  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute  are  the  two 
species.  But  Things  in  themselves  are  not  all  of  them 
infinite  and  absolute.  Matter  and  Mind,  as  such,  are 
neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  It  is  evident  that  Sir  . 
W.  Hamilton  had  never  decided  what  extent  he  intended 
giving  to  the  term  Unconditioned.  Sometimes  he  gives 
it  one  degree  of  amplitude,  sometimes  another.  Between 
the  meanings  in  which  he  uses  it  there  is  undoubtedly 
a  link  of  connexion ;  but  this  only  makes  the  matter 
still  worse  than  if  there  were  none.  The  phrase  has 
that  most  dangerous  kind  of  ambiguity,  in  which  the 
meanings,  though  essentially  different,  are  so  nearly  ' 
allied  that  the  thinker  unconsciously  interchanges  them 
one  with  another.* 

*  In  page  8  of  the  Discussions,  speaking  of  the  one  of  M.  Cousin's 
three  elements  of  Consciousness  which  that  author  "  variously  expresses    - 
*'  by  the  terms,  unity,  identity,  substance,  absolute  cause,  the  infinite,  pur-    i 
"  tkought,  &c.,"  Sir  W.  Hamilton  says,  "  we  will  briefly  call  it  the  Uncon-    \ 
"  ditioned."     What  M.  Cousin  denominates  "plurality, difference, phcBno\    i 
*'  menon,   relative  catise,   the  finite,  determined   thought,   &c ,"    ISir  W. 
Hamilton  says,  "  we  would  style  the  Conditioned."     This,  1  think,  is  as 
near  as  he  ever  comes  to  an  explanation  of  what  he  means  by  these  words. 
It  is  obviously  no  explanation  at  alL     It  tells  us  what  (in  logical  language) 


70  SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN. 

The  probability  is  that  when  our  author  asserts  that 
"  to  think  is  to  condition,"  he  uses  the  word  Condition 
in  neither  of  these  senses,  but  in  a  third  meaning, 
equally  familiar  to  him,  and  recurring  constantly  in 
such  phrases  as  "  the  conditions  of  our  thinking  faculty," 
"  conditions  of  thought,"  and  the  like.  He  means  by 
Conditions  something  similar  to  Kant's  Forms  of 
Sense  and  Categories  of  Understanding ;  a  meaning 
more  correctly  expressed  by  another  of  his  phrases, 
"  Necessary  Laws  of  Thought."  He  is  applying  to  the 
mind  the  scholastic  maxim,  "  Quicquid  recipitur,  re- 
cipitur  ad  modum  recipientis."  He  means  that  our 
perceptive  and  conceptive  faculties  have  their  own  laws, 
wliich  not  only  determine  what  we  are  capable  of  per- 
ceiving and  conceiving,  but  put  into  our  perceptions  and 
conceptions  elements  not  derived  from  the  thing  per- 
ceived or  conceived,  but  from  the  mind  itself:  That, 
therefore,  we  cannot  at  once  infer  that  whatever  we  find  in 
our  perception  or  conception  of  an  object,  has  necessarily 
a  prototype  in  the  object  itself:  and  that  we  must,  in  each 
instance,  determine  this  question  by  philosophic  investi- 
gation. According  to  this  doctrine,  which  no  fault  can 
be  found  with  our  author  for  maintaining,  though  often 
\  for  not  carrying  it  far  enough — the  "  conditions  of 
thought"  would  mean  the  attributes  with  which,  it  is 
supposed,  the  mind  cannot  help  investing  every  object 
of  thought — the  elements  which,  derived  from  its  own 
structure,  cannot  but  enter  into  every  conception  it  is 
able  to  form ;  even  if  there  should  be  nothing  cor- 
responding in  the  object  which  is  the  prototype  of  the 
conception :  though  our  author,  in  most  cases,  (therein 
ditfering  from  Kant)  believes  that  there  is  this  cor- 
respondence. 

We  have  here  an  intelligible  meaning  for  the  doctrine 

the  terms  denote,  but  not  what  they  connote.  An  ennmeration  of  the 
things  called  by  a  name  is  not  a  detinition.  If  the  name,  for  instance, 
were  "  dog,"  it  would  be  no  definition  to  say  that  what  are  variously 
denominated  spaniels,  mastiffs,  and  so  forth,  "  we  would  style  "  dogs.  The 
thing  wanted  is  to  know  what  attributes  common  to  all  these  the  word 
signifies, — -what  is  affirmed  of  a  thing  by  calling  it  a  dog. 


SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN.  71 

that  to  think  is  to  condition  ;  and  as  Mr.  Mansel,  in  his 
reply,  guarantees  this  as  the  true  meaning  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  I  will  accept  it  as  being  so.  If,  then  (which 
I  do  not  here  discuss),  the  philosophical  doctrine  be 
true,  which  was  held  partially  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  and 
in  a  more  thorough-going  manner  by  Kant,  viz.  that,  in 
the  act  of  thought,  the  mind,  by  an  a  priori  necessity, 
invests  the  object  of  thought  with  attributes  which  are  I 
not  in  itself,  but  are  created  by  the  mind's  own  laws  ;  ' 
and  if  we  consent  to  call  these  necessities  of  thought  i 
the  conditions  of  thought ;  then  evidently  to  think  is  to 
condition,  and  to  think  the  Unconditioned  would  be  to 
think  the  unthinkable.  But  the  Unconditioned,  in  this 
application  of  the  term,  is  not  identical  with  the  Infinite  : 
plus  the  Absolute.  The  Infinite  and  the  Absolute  are  ^ 
not  necessarily,  in  this  sense,  unconditioned.  The  ' 
words  infinite  and  absolute,  as  ^I  have  already  said,  have 
no  meaning  save  as  expressing  some  concrete  reality 
or  supposed  reality,  possessing  infinitely  or  absolutely 
attributes  of  some  sort,  which  attributes,  as  finite  and 
limited,  we  are  able  to  think.  In  thinking  these  attri- 
butes, we  are  not  able  to  divest  ourselves  of  our  mental 
conditions,  but  we  can  think  the  attributes  as  surpassing  \ 
the  conditions.  "  To  condition,"  and  "  to  think  under 
conditions,"  are  ambiguous  phrases.  An  Infinite  Being 
may  be  thought,  and  is  thought,  with  reference  to  the 
conditions,  but  not  as  limited  by  them.  The  most 
familiar  examples  of  the  alleged  necessary  conditions 
of  thought,  are  Time  and  Space :  we  cannot,  it  is 
affirmed,  think  anything,  except  in  time  and  space. 
Now,  an  Infinite  Being  is  not  thought  as  in  time  and 
space,  if  this  means  as  occupying  a  portion  of  time  or 
a  portion  of  space.  But  (substituting  for  Time  the 
word  Duration,  to  get  rid  of  the  theological  antithesis  of 
Time  and  Eternity)  we  do  actually  conceive  Grod  in 
reference  to  Duration  and  Extension,  namely,  as  occupy- 
ing the  whole  of  both  ;  and  these  being  conceived  as 
infinite,  to  conceive  a  Being  as  occupying  the  whole  of 
them  is  to  conceive  that  Being  as  infinite.     If  thinking 


72  SIR  WILLIAM   HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN. 

God  as  eternal  and  omnipresent  is  thinking  him  in 
Space  and  Time,  we  do  think  God  in  Space  and  Time : 
if  thinking  him  as  eternal  and  omnipresent  is  not 
thinking"  him  in  Space  and  Time,  we  are  capable  of 
thinking  something  out  of  Space  and  Time.  Mr. 
Mansel  may  make  his  choice  between  the  two  opinions. 
I  have  already  shown  that  the  ideas  of  infinite  space  and 
time  are  real  and  positive  conceptions :  that  of  a  Being 
who  is  in  all  Space  and  in  all  Time  is  no  less  so.  To 
think  anything,  must  of  course  be  to  condition  it  by 
attributes  which  are  themselves  thinkable ;  but  not 
necessarily  to  condition  it  by  a  limited  quantum  of  those 
attributes  :  on  the  contrary,  we  may  think  it  under  a 
degree  of  them  greater  than  all  limited  degrees,  and  this 
is  to  think  it  as  infinite.* 

If  we  now  ask  ourselves,  as  the  result  of  this  long 
discussion,  what  Sir  W.  Hamilton  can  be  considered  as 
having  accomplished  in  this  celebrated  Essay,  our  answer 
must  be :  That  he  has  established,  more  thoroughly 
perhaps  than  he  intended,  the  futility  of  all  speculation 
respecting  those  meaningless  abstractions  "  The  infi- 
nite" and  "  The  Absolute,"  notions  contradictory  in 
themselves,  and  to  which  no  corresponding  realities  do 
or  can  exist. f     Respecting  the    unknowableness,  not  of 

*  "  To  be  conceived  as  unconditioned,"  says  Mr.  Mansel  (pp.  17,  18), 
"  God  must  be  conceived  as  exempt  from  action  in  time  :  to  be  conceived 
"  as  a  person,  if  his  personality  resembles  ours,  he  must  be  conceived  as 
"  acting  in  time."  Exempt  from  action  in  time,  as  much  as  you  please ; 
in  other  words,  not  necessitated  to  it,  nor  restricted  by  its  conditions ;  but 
d.d  any  one  ever  conceive  the  Deity  as  not  acting  in  time  ?  Nay,  even  if 
he  is  not  conceived  as  a  person,  but  only  as  the  Brst  principle  of  the  uni- 
verse, "  one  absolutely  first  principle  on  which  everything  else  depends," 
a  belief  which  is  held  by  Mr.  Mansel  along  with  the  Christian  doctrine  of 
the  Divine  Personality  (pp.  7  to  18) ;  even  so,  the  first  principle  of  every- 
thing which  takes  place  in  Time,  must,  from  the  very  meaning  of  the 
words,  not  ouly  be  conceived  as  acting  in  Time,  but  must  really  act  in 
Time,  and  in  all  Time.  Action  in  Time  does  not  belong  to  the  Deity  as  a 
Person,  but  quite  as  much  to  the  Deity  as  the  tirst  principle  of  all  things, 
which  is  what  Mr.  Mansel  means  by  the  Unconditioned. 

t  On  this  Mr.  Mansel's  remark  is  (pp.  110,  111)  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
did  not  assert  these  to  be  unmeaning  ab.stractions.  I  never  pretended 
that  he  did ;  the  gist  of  my  complaint  against  him  is,  that  he  did  not  per- 
ceive them  to  be  unmeaning.  "  Hamilton,"  says  Mr.  Mansel,  "maintains 
"  that  the  terms  absolute  and  infinite  are  perfectly  intelligible  as  abstrac- 


SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AGAINST    COUSIN.  .    73 

"  the  Infinite,"  or  "the  Absolute,"  but  of  concrete  persons 
or  things  possessing  infinitely  or  absolutely  certain  specific 
attributes,  I  cannot  think  that  our  author  has  proved 
anything ;  nor  do  I  think  it  possible  to  prove  them  any 
otherwise  unknowable,  than  that  they  can  only  be  known 
in  their  relations  to  us,  and  not  as  Noumena,  or  Things 
in  themselves.  This,  however,  is  true  of  the  finite  as 
well  as  of  the  infinite,  of  the  imperfect  as  well  as  of  the 
completed  or  absolute.  Our  author  has  merely  proved 
the  uncognoscibility  of  a  being  which  is  nothing  but  in- 
finite, or  nothing  but  absolute  :  and  since  nobody  supposes 
that  there  is  such  a  being,  but  only  beings  which  are 
something  positive  carried  to  the  infinite,  or  to  the  abso- 
lute, to  have  established  this  point  cannot  be  regarded  as 
any  great  achievement.  He  has  not  even  refuted  M. 
Cousin ;  whose  doctrine  of  an  intuitive  cognition  of  the 
Deity,  like  every  other  doctrine  relating  to  intuition,  can 
only  be  disproved  by  showing  it  to  be  a  mistaken  inter- 
pretation of  facts ;  which,  again,  as  we  shall  see  here- 
after, can  only  be  done  by  pointing  out  in  what  other 
way  the  seeming  percepti^ons  may  have  originated,  which 
are  erroneously  supposed  to  be  intuitive.  C[ 

"  tions,  as  much  so  as  relative  and  finite."  Qu/is  duhitavit  ?  It  is  not 
the  terms  absohite  and  infinite  that  are  unmeaning;  it  is  "The  Infinite" 
and  "The  Absolute."  Infinite  and  Absolute  are  real  attributes,  abstracted 
from  concrete  objects  of  thought,  if  not  of  experience,  which  are  at  least 
believed  to  possess  those  attributes.  "  The  Infinite  "  and  "  The  Absolute  " 
are  illegitimate  abstractions  of  what  never  were,  nor  could  without  self- 
contradiction  be  supposed  to  be,  attributes  of  any  concrete.  1  regret  to 
difi"er,  on  this  point,  from  my  distinguished  reviewer  in  the  Westminster 
Review,  who  considers  these  to  be  intelligible  abstractions,  though  of  a 
higher  reach  of  abstraction  than  the  preceding  (p.  14).  The  distinction  is 
seized  by  one  of  my  American  critics.  Dr.  H.  B.  Smith  (p.  ISi),  who  re- 
gards it  as  the  difference  between  talking  "  about  the  Infinite  and  Abso- 
lute as  entities,"  and  considering  them  "  simply  as  modes  or  predicates  of 
real  existences."  That  there  are  persons  "  in  Laputa  or  the  Empire"  (as 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  phrases  it)  who  do  talk  about  them  as  entities,  up  to 
any  pitch  of  wild  nonsense,  I  am  quite  aware  ;  and  against  these  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  Essay,  as  the  protest,  though  the  insufficient  protest,  of  a  rival 
Transcendeutalist,  has  its  value. 


q\;t*-At^      W    Vt*     VAAA*^^  . 


74 


CHAPTER  V. 


WHAT     IS     REJECTED      AS      KNOWLEDGE      BY      SIR     WILLIAM 
HAMILTON,   BROUGHT  BACK  UNDER  THE  NAME  OF  BELIEF. 

We  have  found  Sir  W.  Hamilton  maintaining  with  great 
earnestness,  and  taking  as  the  basis  of  his  philosoph}""; 
an  opinion   respecting  the  limitation  of  human  know- 
ledge, which,  if  he  did  not  mean  so  much  by  it  as  the 
language  in  which  he  often  clothed  it  seemed  to  imply, 
/       meant  at  least  this,  that  the  Absolute,  the  Infinite,  the 
\       Unconditioned,  are  necessarily  unknowable   by  us.     I 
have  discussed  this  opinion  as   a  serious   philosophical 
.   dogma,  expressing  a  definite  view  of  the  relation  between 
the  universe  and  human  apprehension,  and  fitted  to  guide 
us  in  distinguishing  the  questions  which  it  is  of  any 
^,%vail  to  ask,  from  those  which  are  altogether  closed  to 
j>r^  our  investigations. 
,    ^^  V  But  had  the  doctrine,  in  the  mind  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
)*^^^meant  ten  times  more  than  it  did — had  he  upheld  the 
w^^V^     relativity  of  human  knowledge  in  the  fullest,  instead  of 
t^         the  scantiest  meaning  of  which  the  words  are  susceptible 
. — the  question  would  still  have  been  reduced  to  naught, 
^  or  to  a  mere  verbal  controversy,  by  his  admission  of  a 

second  kind  of  intellectual  conviction  called  Belief; 
which  is  anterior  to  knowledge,  is  the  foundation  of  it, 
and  is  not  subject  to  its  limitations  ;  and  through  the 
medium  of  which  we  may  have,  and  are  justified  in 
having,  a  full  assurance  of  all  the  things  which  he  has 
pronounced  unknowable  to  us ;  and  this  not  exclusively 
by  revelation,  that  is,  on  the  supposed  testimony  of  a 
Being  whom  we  have  ground  for  trusting  as  veracious, 
but  by  our  natural  faculties. 


BKLIEF    WITHOUT    KNOWLEDGE.  75 

Trom  some  philosophers,  this  distinction  would  have 
the  appearance  of  a  mere  fetch — one  of  those  transparent 
evasions  whi^-h  have  sometimes  been  resorted  to  by  the 
assailants  of  received  opinions,  that  they  might  have  an 
opportunity    of  ruining  the    rational  foundations  of  a 
doctrine  without  exposing  themselves  to  odiura  by  its 
direct  denial ;  as  the  writers  against  Christianity  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  after  declaring  some  doctrine  to  be 
contradictory  to  reason,  and  exhibiting  it  in  the  absurdest 
possible  light,  were  wont  to  add  that  this  was  not  of  the 
smallest  consequence,  religion  being  an  affair  of  faith, 
not  of  reason.      But  Sir  W.  Hamilton  evidently  meant    <^q}^ 
what  he  says  ;  he  was  expressing  a  serious  conviction,      ujfi^ 
and  one  of  the  tenets  of  his  philosophy :  he  really  recog-  '^'^ij^ 
nised  under  the  name  of  Belief  a  substantive  source,  T  was    '^^  t'^''^ 
going  to  say,  of  knowledge ;  I  may  at  all  events  say  of 
trustworthy  evidence.     This   appears   in  the  following 
passages  : — 

"  The*  sphere  of  our  belief  is  much  more  extensive 
"  than  the  sphere  of  our  knowledge,  and  therefore,  when 
"  I  deny  that  the  Infinite  can  by  us  be  known,  I  am  far 
"  from  denying  that  by  us  it  is,  must,  and  ought  to  be, 
"  believed.  This  I  have  indeed  anxiously  evinced,  both 
"  by  reasoning  and  authority." 

"  St.  Austinf  accurately  says,  'We  know,  what  rests 
*' upon  reason ;  but  believe,  what  rests  upon  authority! 
"  But  reason  itself  must  rest  at  last  upon  authority;  for 
"  the  original  data  of  reason  do  not  rest  on  reason,  but 
"  are  necessarily  accepted  by  reason  on  the  authority  of 
"  what  is  beyond  itself  These  data  are,  therefore,  in 
**  rigid  propriety,  Beliefs  or  Trusts.  Thus  it  is  that  in 
"  the  last  resort  we  must  perforce  philosophically  admit, 
"  that  belief  is  the  primary  condition  of  reason,  and  not 
"  reason  the  ultimate  ground  of  belief.  We  are  com- 
"  pelled  to  surrender  the  proud  Intellige  ut  credas  of  Abe- 
"  lard,  to  content  ourselves  with  the  humble  Crede  ut 
"  intelligas  of  Ansel m." 

*  Letter  to  Mr.  Calderwood,  in  Appendix  to  Lectures,  ii.  530,  531. 
t  Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  76U, 


, 


76  BELIEF    WITHOUT    KNOWLEDGE. 

And  in  another  part  of  the  same  Dissertation,*  (he  is 
arguing  that  we  do  not  believe,  but  know,  the  external 
world) — "  If  asked,  indeed,  bow  we  know  that  we  know 
"  it  ?  how  we  know  that  what  we  apprehend  in  sensible 
"  perception  is,  as  consciousness  assures  us,  an  object, 
"  external,  extended,  and  numerically  different  from  the 
"  conscious  subject  ?  how  we  know  that  this  object  is  not 
"  a  mere  mode  of  mind,  illusively  presented  to  us  as  a 
"  mere  mode  of  matter  ;  then  indeed  we  must  reply  th;it 
"  we  do  not  in  propriety  knoio  that  what  we  are  com- 
"  pelled  to  perceive  as  not-self  is  not  a  perception  of  self, 
"  and  that  we  can  only  on  reflection  believe  such  to  be 
"  the  case,  in  reliance  on  the  original  necessity  of  so 
"  believing,  imposed  on  us  by  our  nature." 

It  thus  appears  that,  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  opinion, 
Belief  is  a  conviction  of  higher  authority  than  Know- 
ledge ;  Belief  is  ultimate,  knowledge  only  derivative  ; 
Knowledge  itself  finally  rests  on  Belief;  natural  beliefs 
are  the  sole  warrant  for  all  our  knowledge.  Knowledge, 
therefore,  is  an  inferior  ground  of  assurance  to  natural 
Belief;  and  as  we  have  beliefs  which  tell  us  that  we 
know,  and  without  which  we  could  not  be  assured  of 
the  truth  of  our  knowledge,  so  we  have,  and  are  warranted 
in  having,  beliefs  beyond  our  knowledge  ;  beliefs  re- 
specting the  Unconditioned — respecting  that  which  is 
in  itself!  unknowable. 

I  am  not  now  considering  what  it  is  that,  in  our 
author's  opinion,  we  are  bound  to  believe  concerning  the 
unknowable.  What  here  concerns  us  is,  the  nullity  to 
which  this  doctrine  reduces  the  position  to  which  our 
author  seemed  to  cling  so  firmly — viz.,  that  our  know- 
ledge is  relative  to  ourselves,  and  that  we  can  have  no 
knowledge  of  the  infinite  and  absolute.  In  telling  us 
that  it  is  impossible  to  the  human  faculties  to  know  any- 
thing about  Things  in  themselves,  we  naturally  suppose 
he  intends  to  warn  us  off  the  ground — to  bid  us  under- 
stand that  this  subject  of  enquiry  is  closed  to  us,  and 

*  Pp.  749,  760. 


BELIEF    WITHOUT  KNOWLEDGE. 


77 


exhort  us  to  turn  our  attention  elsewhere.  It  appears 
that  nothing  of  the  kind  was  intended  :  we  are  to  un- 
derstand, on  the  contrary,  that  we  may  have  the  best 
grounded  and  most  complete  assurance  of  the  things 
which  were  declared  unknowable — an  assurance  not  only 
equal  or  greater  in  degree,  but  the  same  in  nature,  as 
we  have  for  the  truth  of  our  knowledge :  and  that  tjie 
matter  in  dispute  was  only  whether  this  assurance  or 
convicfcion  shall  be  called  knowledge^  or  by  another  name. 
If  this  be  all,  I  must  say  I  think  it  not  of  the  smallest 
consequence.  If  no  more  than  this  be  intended  by  the 
"  great  axiom "  and  the  elaborate  argument  a^rainst 
Cousin,  a  great  deal  of  trouble  has  been  taken  to  very 
little  purpose  ;  and  the  subject  would  have  been  better 
left  where  Reid  left  it,  who  did  not  trouble  himself  with 
nice  distinctions  between  belief  and  knowledge,  but  was 
content  to  consider  us  as  knowing  that  which,  by  the 
constitution  of  our  nature,  we  are  forced,  with  entire 
conviction,  to  believe.  According  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
we  believe  premises,  but  know  the  conclusions  from  them. 
The  ultimate  facts  of  consciousness*  are  "  given  less  in 
"  the  form  of  cognitions  than  of  beliefs  :"  "  Conscious- 
"  ness  in  its  last  analysis,  in  other  words  our  primary 
"  experience,  is  a  faith."  But  if  we  know  the  theorems 
of  Euclid,  and  do  not  know  the  definitions  and  axioms 
on  which  they  rest,  the  word  knowledge,  thus  singularly 
applied,  must  be  taken  in  a  merely  technical  sense.  To 
say  that  we  believe  the  premises,  but  know  the  conclu- 
sion, would  be  understood  by  every  one  as  meaning  that 
we  had  other  independent  evidence  of  the  conclusion,  .^v^"  ^, 
If  we  only  know  it  through  the  premises,  the  same  name  V  ^'^i, 
ought  in  reason  to  be  given  to  our  assurance  of  hoih.f  J  ■:\\'^ 
III  common  language,  when  Belief  and  Knowledge  are 
distinguished.  Knowledge  is  understood  to  mean  complete  i   'j^^ 

\     • 

*  Discussions,  p.  86. 
t  Accordingly  Sir  W.  Hamilton  himself,  in  one  of  the  Dissertations  on 
Reid  (p.  763),  says  that  "  the  principles  of  our  knowledge  must  be  them-    ( 
"  selves'  knowledge  "     And  there  are  few  who  will  not  approve  this  use  of 
language,  and  condemn  the  other. 

.    ....X        i.i  {\      ftt>    ^Ttw^i(^    ts    6^    i^cvwc--/    »y^M,'^'>^tCv\^ 


) 


F 


7S  BELIEF    WITHOUT    KNOWLEDGE. 

conviction,  Belief  a  conviction  somewhat  short  of  com- 
plete ;  or  else  we  are  said  to  believe  when  the  evidence 
is  probable  (as  that  of  testimony),  but  to  know,  when  it 
is  intuitive,  or  demonstrative  from  intuitive   premises  : 
we  believe,  for  example,  that  there  is  a   Continent  of 
America,  but  know  that  we  are  alive,  that  two  and  two 
, .  •  make  four,  and  that  the  sum  of  any  two  sides  of  a  triangle 
\jk^   ifyis  greater  than  the  third  side.     This  is  a  distinction  of 
^.  «-\^ practical  value:  but  in  Sir  W.   Hamilton's  use  of  the 
term,  it  is  the  intuitive  convictions  that  are  the  Beliefs, 
and  those  which   are  dependent  and  contingent   upon 
them,  compose  our  knowledge.     Whether  a  particular 
portion  of  our  convictions,  which  are  not  more  certain, 
f^         but  if  anything  less  certain,  than  the  remainder,  and 
^jiM^  .   .  according  to  our  author  rest  on  the  same  ultimate  basis, 
p        shall  in  opposition  to  the  common  usage  of  mankind, 
^  ^^     receive  exclusively  the  appellation   of  knowledge,  is  at 
\^Ji.     the  most  a  question  of  terminology,  and  can  only  be 
A/(^'''*^  ^  made  to  appear  philosophically  important  by  confound- 
J^  ^    ing  difference  of  name  with  difference   of  fact.     That 
Jj>*»     anything  capable  of  being  said  on  such  a  subject  should 
Ij    5.^  pass  for  a  fundamental  principle  of  philosophy,  and  be 
X\\    ^"one  of  the  chief  sources  of  the  reputation  of  a  meta- 
^'^    physical  system,  is  but  an  example  how  the  mere  forms 
S ,  'W^    of  logic  and  metaphysics  can  blind  mankind  to  the  total 

absence  of  their  substance. 
*jj>'^.       It  must  not  be  supposed,  from  anything  which  has 
. '^Yy-' ^  '  been  here  said,  that  I  wish   to  abolish   the   distinction 
f  ^  yivV  between  Knowledge  and  Belief  (meaning  True  Belief) 
or  maintain  that  it  is  necessarily  a  distinction  without  a 
difference.     Those  terms  are  employed  to  denote  more 
than  one  real  difference,  and  neither  of  them  can  conve- 
niently be   dispensed  with  in  philosophy.*     What  con- 


> 


*  There  is  much  dispute  among  philosophers  as  to  the  difPerence 
between  Knowledge  and  Belief;  and  the  strife  is  not  likely  to  terminate, 
until  they  perceive  that  the  real  question  is,  not  what  the  distinction  is, 
but  what  it  shall  be  ;  what  one  among  several  differences  already  known 
and  recognised,  the  words  shall  be  employed  to  denote.  "The  word  belief," 
says  Dr.  M'Cosh  (p.  36),  in  this  more  discerning  than  the  generality,  "  is 
*'  unfortunately  a  very  vague  one,  and  may  stand  for  a  number  of  very 


BELIEF    WITHOUT    KNOWLEDGE. 


79 


cerns  us  in  the  present  chapter  is  not  the  rationale  of 
the  distinction  between  knowledge  and  beUef,  but  whether 
that  distinction  is  relevant  to  the  question  between  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  and  M.  Cousin  about  the  Infinite  and  the 
Absolute ;  and  whether  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  warranted 
in  giving  back  under  the  name  of  Belief,  the  assurance 
or  conviction  respecting  these  objects  which  he  refuses 
under  the  name  of  knowledge.  My  position  is,  that 
the  Infinite  and  Absolute  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has 


"  different  mental  aflFections.  When  I  am  speaking  of  firat  or  intuitive 
*'  principles,  1  use  the  term  to  signify  our  conviction  of  the  existence  of 
'•  an  object  not  now  present,  and  thus  I  distinguish  primitive  faith  from 
"  primitive  knowledge,  in  which  the  object  is  present."  This  distinction 
agrees  well  with  usage  in  the  cases  to  which  Dr.  M'Cosh  applies  it :  we  know 
that  which  we  perceive  by  the  senses,  and  believe  that  which  we  only  re- 
member :  we  know  that  we  ourselves,  and  (while  we  look  at  them)  our 
house  and  garden,  exist,  and  believe  the  existence  of  the  Czar  of  Russia 
and  tile  Island  of  Ceylou.  Every  definition  of  Belief,  as  distinguished 
from  Knowledge,  must  include  these  cases,  because  in  them  the  conviction 
which  receives  the  name  of  Belief  falls  short  of  the  complete  assurance 
implied  in  the  word  knowledge :  our  memory  may  deceive  us ;  the  Czar 
or  the  island  may  have  beeu  swallowed  up  by  an  earthquake.  But  if  we 
attempt  to  carry  out  Dr.  M'Cosh's  distinction  through  the  entire  region 
of  thought,  the  whole  of  what  we  call  our  scientific  knowledge,  except 
the  primary  facts  or  intuitions  on  which  it  is  grounded,  has  to  pass  into 
the  category  of  Belief ;  for  the  objects  with  which  it  is  conversant  are 
seldom  present. 

Mr.  Mansel  might  be  supposed  to  be  adopting  Dr.  M'Cosh's  distinction, 
when  he  says  (p.  126),  "We  believe  that  the  true  distinction  between 
"  knowledge  and  belief  may  ultimately  be  referred  to  the  presence  or 
"  absence  of  the  corresponding  intuition."  But  his  criterion  of  the  dis- 
tinction, and,  according  to  him,  feir  W.  Hamilton's  also,  is  the  following  : 
we  believe  that  a  thing  is,  but  do  not  know  even  that  it  is,  unless  we  can 
conceive  how,  or  in  what  manner,  it  is.  "  When  I  say  that  I  believe  in 
"  the  existence  of  a  spiritual  being  who  can  see  without  eyes,  I  cannot 
"  conceive  the  manner  in  which  seeing  co-exists  with  the  absence  of  the 
"  bodily  organ  of  sight"  (p.  126).  "  We  cannot  conceive  the  manner  in 
"  which  the  unconditioned  and  the  personal  are  united  in  the  Divine 
"  Nature  ;  jet  we  may  believe  that,  in  some  manner  unknown  to  us,  they 
"  are  so  united.  To  conceive  the  union  of  two  attributes  in  one  object  of 
"  thought,  I  must  be  able  to  conceive  them  as  united  in  some  particular 
"  manner  :  when  this  cannot  be  done,  I  may  nevertheless  believe  thai  the 
"  union  is  possible,  though  I  am  unable  to  conceive  how  it  is  possible." 
This  may  be  more  briefly  expressed  by  saying  that  we  can  beheve  what 
is  inconceivable,  but  can  know  only  what  is  conceivable ;  and  undoubtedly 
EolH  these  contrasted  propositions  are  maintained  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton. 
But  to  regard  them  as  a  clue  to  the  distinction  in  his  mind  between 
knowledge  and  belief,  would  be  to  misunderstand  his  opinions :  for  the 
convictions  which  he  most  emphatically  characterized  as  beliefs,  in  contra- 
distinction  to  knowledge,  are  what  he  calls  our  natural  and  necessary 


80  BELIEF    WITHOUT   KNOWLEDGE. 

been  proving  to  be  unknowable,  being  made  up  of  con- 
tradictions, are  as  incapable  of  being  believed  as  of  being 
known ;  tbat  tbe  only  attitude  in  reference  to  tliera,  of 
any  intellect  which  apprehends  the  meaning  of  language, 
is  that  of  disbelief.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  In- 
finites and  Absolutes  which,  not  being  self-contradictory, 
admit  of  being  believed,  namely,  concrete  realities  sup- 
posed to  be  infinite  or  absolute  in  respect  of  certain 
attributes:  but  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  as  I  maintain,  has 
done  nothing  towards  proving  that  such  concrete  reali- 
ties cannot  be  known,  in  the  way  in  which  we  know 
otber  things,  namely,  in  their  relations  to  us.  When, 
therefore,  he  affirms  that  though  the  Infinite  cannot  by 
us  be  known,  "  by  us  it  is,  must,  and  ought  to  be  be- 
"  lieved,"  I  answer,  that  the  Infinite  which,  as  he  has  so 
Liboriously  proved,  cannot  be  known,  neither  is,  must, 
nor  ought  to  be  believed ;  not  because  it  cannot  be 
known,  but  because  there  exists  no  such  thing  for  us  to 

beliefs,  "the  original  data  of  reason,"  which,  far  from  being  inconceivable, 
are  usually  tested  by  being  themselves  conceivable  while  their  negations 
are  not.  If  knowledge  were  distinguished  from  belief  by  our  being  aware 
of  the  manner  as  well  as  the  fact,  we  coald  not  believe  and  know  the  same 
fact ;  our  knowledge  could  not  rest,  as  he  says  it  does,  on  a  beUef  that  it 
is  itself  true. 

But  indeed,  this  notion  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  that  we  have  two  convic- 
tions on  the  same  point,  one  guaranteeing  the  other — our  knowledge  of  a 
truth,  and  a  belief  m  the  truth  of  that  knowledge — seems  to  me  apiece  of 
false  philosophy,  resembling  the  doctrine  he  elsewhere  rejects,  that  we 
have  both  a  feeling  and  a  consciousness  of  the  feehng.  We  do  not  know 
a  truth  and  believe  it  besides;  the  belief  is  the  knowledge.  Belief, 
altogether,  is  a  genus  which  includes  knowledge :  according  to  the  usage 
of  language  we  believe  whatever  we  assent  to  ;  but  some  of  our  beliefs  are 
knowledge,  others  are  only  belief.  The  first  requisite  which,  by  universal 
admission,  a  belief  must  possess,  to  constitute  it  knowledge,  is  that  it  be 
true.  The  second  is,  that  it  be  well  grounded ;  for  what  we  believe  by 
accident,  or  on  evidence  not  sufficient,  we  are  not  said  to  know.  The 
grounds  must,  moreover,  be  sufficient  for  the  very  highest  degree  of  assu- 
rance; for  we  do  not  consider  ourselves  to  know,  as  long  as  we  think  there 
is  any  possibility  (I  mean  any  appreciable  possibility)  of  our  being  mis- 
taken. But  when  a  belief  is  true,  is  held  with  the  strongest  conviction 
we  ever  have,  and  held  on  grounds  sufficient  to  justify  that  strongest  con- 
viction, most  people  would  think  it  worthy  of  the  name  of  knowledge, 
whether  it  be  grounded  on  our  personal  investigations,  or  on  the  appro- 
priate testimony,  and  whether  we  know  only  the  fact  itself,  or  the  manner 
of  the  fact.  And  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  purposes  of  philosophy, 
as  well  as  those  of  common  life,  are  best  answered  by  making  this  the  line 
of  demarcation. 


BELIEF    WITHOUT  KNOWLEDGE.  81 

know;  unless,  with  Hegel,  we  hold  that  the  Absolute 
is  not  subject  to  the  Law  of  Contradiction,  but  is  at 
once  a  real  existence  and  the  synthesis  of  contradictories. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Infinite  and  Absolute 
which  are  really  capable  of  being  believed,  are  also,  for 
anything  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  shown  to  the  contrary, 
capable  of  being,  in  certain  of  their  aspects,  known. 


VmM    ^^«>-»^    UU.  U«^iuL*<.'    (a^  C    '  -     -    '  '       '   -^  ,M-  u.  tl«rwf<A 


3;U<.    c>vaCLi/..<jUJL   Cowl.  U.  VVl<maU2uam^    ,  <tv(»  ^Ava   fctAly^    »H^  U  Ui<  ici^k   H 


82 


CHAPTER  Vr. 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF  THE  CONDITIONED. 

The  "  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned,"  in  its  wider 
sense,  includes  all  the  doctrines  that  we  have  been  dis- 
cussing. In  its  narrower,  it  consists,  I  think,  mainly  of 
a  single  proposition,  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  often 
reiterates,  and  insists  upon  as  a  fundamental  law  of 
human  intellect.  Though  suggested  by  Kant's  Anti- 
nomies of  Speculative  Reason,  in  the  form  which  it  bears 
in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  writings  it  belongs,  I  believe, 
originally  to  himself.  No  doctrine  which  he  has  any- 
w^here  laid  down  is  more  chara'cteristic  of  his  mode  of 
thought,  and  none  is  more  strongly  associated  with  his 
fame. 

For  the  better  understanding  of  this  theory,  it  is 
necessary  to  premise  some  explanations  respecting 
another  doctrine,  which  is  also  his,  but  not  peculiar  to 
him.  He  protests,  frequently  and  with  emphasis, 
against  the  notion  that  whatever  is  inconceivable  must 
be  false.  **  There  is  no  ground,"  he  says,*  "  for  infer- 
*'  ring  a  certain  fact  to  be  impossible,  merely  from  our 
"  inability  to  conceive  its  possibility,"  I  regard  this 
opinion  as  perfectly  just.  It  is  one  of  the  psychological 
truths,  highly  important,  and  by  no  means  generally 
recognised,  which  frequently  meet  us  in  his  writings, 
and  which  give  them,  in  m}'-  eyes,  most  of  their  philo- 
sophical value.  I  am  obliged  to  add,  that  though  he 
often  furnishes  a  powerful  statement  and  vindication  of 
such  truths,  he  seldom  or  never  consistently  adheres  to 
them.     Too  often  what  he  has   affirmed  in  generals  is 

*  Discussions,  p.  624. 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE   CONDITIONED.  83 

taken  back  in  details,  and  arguments  of  his  own  are 
found  to  rest  on  philosophical  commonplaces  which  he 
has  himself  repudiated  and  refuted.  I  am  afraid  that 
the  present  is  one  of  these  eases,  and  that  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton will  sometimes  be  found  contending  that  a  thing 
cannot  possibly  be  true  because  we  cannot  conceive  it  : 
but  at  all  events  he  disclaims  any  such  inference,  and 
broadly  lays  down,  that  things  not  only  may  be,  but 
are,  of  which  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  conceive  even  the 
possibility. 

Before  showing  how  this  proposition  is  developed  into 
the  "  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned,"  let  us  make  the 
ground   safe    before  us,  by  bestowing  a  brief  considera- 
tion  upon  the  proposition  itself,  its  meaning,  and  the  i 
foundations  on  which  it  rests.                                                         u»r^ 

We  cannot  conclude  anything  to  be  impossible,  because  V  jL^ 
its  possibility  is  inconceivable   to  us ;   for  two  reasons. 
First ;  what  seems  to  us  inconceivable,  and,  so  far  as  we 
are  personally  concerned,  may  really  be  so,  usually  owes 
its  inconceivabilit}'  only  to  a  strong  association.      When, 
in  a  prolonged  experience,  we.  have  often  had  a  particular 
sensation   or   mental  impression,    and    never  without  ai 
certain    other    sensation  or  impression  immediately  ac-I 
companying   it,    there   grows   up    so    firm  an    adhesion 
between   our  ideas   of  the  two,    that  we  are  unable  to 
think  of  the  former  without  thinking  the  latter  in  close 
combination    with  it.     And  unless    other  parts  of  our 
experience  afford  us  some  analogy  to  aid  in  disentang-  \ 
ling  the  two  ideas,  our  incapacity  of  imagining  the  one 
liact  without  the  other  grows,  or  is  prone  to  grow,  into  a 
belief  that  the  one  cannot  exist  without  the  other.     This  , 
is  the  law  of  Inseparable  Association,  an  element  of  our  | 
nature  of  which  few  have  realized  to  themselves  the  full  I 
power.     It  was  for  the  first  time  largely  applied  to  the 
explanation  of  the  more  complicated  mental  phajnomeua 
by  Mr.  James  Mill ;  and  is,  in  an  especial  manner,   the 
key  to  the   phaenomenon   of  inconceivability.     As  that 
phsenomenon  only  exists  because  our  powers  of  concep-  I 
tion  are  determined  by  our  limited  experience,   Incon- 

G  2 


\ 


84  THE    PHILOSOPHY    Of"  THE    CONDITIONED. 

ceivables  are    incessantly  becoming  Conceivables  as  our 
experience  becomes  enlarged.     There  is  no  need  to  go 
fartber  for  an  example  than  tbe  case  of  Antipodes.     This 
physical  fact  was,  to  tbe  early  speculators,  inconceivable  : 
not,  of  course,  tbe  fact  of  persons  in  that  position  ;  this 
the  mind  could  easily  represent  to  itself;  but  tbe  possi- 
bility that,  being  in  that  position,  and.  not  being  nailed 
on,  nor  having  any  glutinous  substance  attached  to  their 
feet,  they  could   help  falling  off.     Here  was  an  insepa- 
rable, though,   as  it   proved  to  be,    not  an  indissoluble 
association,  which  while  it  continued  made  a  real   fact 
what  is  called  inconceivable;  and  because  inconceivable, 
it  was  unhesitatingly  believed  to  be  impossible.     Incon- 
ceivabilities of  similar  character  have,  at  many  periods, 
obstructed  the  reception    of   new  scientific  truths :    the 
Newtonian  system  had   to  contend    against    several    of 
them  ;  and  we  are  not  warranted  in  assigning  a  different 
origin  and  character  to  those  which  still  subsist,  because 
the   experience  that  would  be  capable  of  removing  them 
has  not  occurred.     If  anything  which  is  now  inconceiv- 
able by  us  were  shown  to  us   as  a  fact,  we  should  soon 
find  ourselves  able  to  conceive  it.     We  should  even  be 
in  danger  of  going  over  to  the  opposite  error,  and  believ- 
ing that  the  negation  of  it  is  inconceivable.     There  are 
many  cases  in  the  history  of  science  (I   have  dilated  on 
some  of  them  in  another  work)  where  something  which 
had  once  been  inconceivable,  and  which  people  had  with 
great  difficulty  learnt  to  conceive,  becoming  itself  fixed 
in  the  bonds  of  an  inseparable  association,  scientific  men 
came  to  think  that  it  alone   was  conceivable,  and  that 
the  conflicting  hypothesis  which  all  mankind  had  believed, 
and  which  a  vast  majority  were  probably  believing  still, 
was  inconceivable.     In  I)r.  Whewell's  writings  on   the 
Inductive    Sciences,  this    transition   of  thought    is    not 
only  exemplified  but  defended.     Inconceivability  is  thus 
a  purely  subjective  thing,  arising  from  the  mental  ante- 
cedents of  the   individual  mind,    or  from   those  of  the 
human  mind  generally  at  a  particular  period,  and  cannot 
give  us  any  insight  into  the  possibilities  of  Nature. 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OP    THE    CONDITIONED.  85 

But,  secondly,  even  assuming  that  inconceivability  is 
not  solely  the  consequence  of  limited  experience,  but 
that  some  incapacities  of  conceiving  are  inherent  in  the 
mind,  and  inseparable  from  it ;  this  would  not  entitle  us 
to  infer,  that  what  we  are  thus  incapable  of  conceiving 
cannot  exist.  Such  an  inference  would  only  be  warrant-, 
able,  if  we  could  know  a  priori  that  we  must  have  beeii 
created  capable  of  conceiving  whatever  is  capable  of 
existing :  that  the  universe  of  thought  and  that  of , 
reality,  the  Microcosm  and  the  Macrocosm  (as  they 
once  were  called)  must  have  been  framed  in  complete, 
correspondence  with  one  another.  That  this  is  really 
the  case  has  been  laid  down  expressly  in  some  systems 
of  philosophy,  by  implication  in  more,  and  is  the 
foundation  (among  others)  of  the  systems  of  Schelling 
and  Hegel :  but  an  assumption  more  destitute  of  evidence 
could  scarcely  be  made,  nor  can  one  easily  imagine  any 
evidence  that  could  prove  it,  unless  it  were  revealed  from 
above. 

What  is  inconceivable,  then,  cannot  therefore  be 
inferred  to  be  false.  But  let  us  vary  the  terms  of  the 
proposition,  and  express  it  thus :  what  is  inconceivable,  I 
is  not  therefore  incredible.  We  have  now  a  statement, 
which  may  mean  either  exactly  the  same  as  the  other, 
or  more.  It  may  mean  only  that  our  inability  to  con- 
ceive a  thing,  does  not  entitle  us  to  deny  its  possibility, 
nor  its  existence.  Or  it  may  mean  that  a  thing's 
being  inconceivable  to  us  is  no  reason  against  our 
believing,  and  legitimately  believing,  that  it  actually 
is.  This  is  a  very  different  proposition  from  the  pre- 
ceding. Sir  W.  Hamilton,  as  we  have  said,  goes  this 
length.  It  is  now  necessary  to  enter  more  minutely 
than  at  first  seemed  needful,  into  the  meaning  of 
"inconceivable;"  which,  like  almost  all  the  metaphy- 
sical terms  we  are  forced  to  make  use  of,  is  weighed 
down  with  ambiguities. 

Keid  pointed  out  and  discriminated  two  meanings  of 
the  verb  "to  conceive,"*  giving  rise   to  two  different 

*  "  To  conceive,  to  imagine,  to  apprehend,  when  taken  in  the  proper 


S6  THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF    THE    CONDITIONED. 

meanings  of  inconceivable.  But  Sir  W.  Hamilton  uses 
"  to  conceive  "  in  three  meanings,  and  has  accordingly 
three  meanings  for  Inconceivable ;  though  he  does  not 
give  the  smallest  hint  to  his  readers,  nor  seems  ever  to 
suspect,  that  the  three  are  not  one  and  the  same. 

The  first  meaning  of  Inconceivable  is,  that  of  which 
the  mind  cannot  form  to  itself  any  representation  ;  either 
(as  in  the  case  of  Noumena)  because  no  attributes  are 
given,  out  of  which  a  representation  could  be  framed, 
or  because  the  attributes  given  are  incompatible  with 
one  another — are  such  as  the  mind  cannot  put  together 
in  a  sintjle  imasre.  Of  this  last  case  numerous  instances 
present  themselves  to  the  most  cursory  glance.  The 
fundamental  one  is  that  of  a  simple  contradiction.  We 
cannot  represent  anything  to  ourselves  as  at  once  being 
something,  and  not  being  it ;  as  at  once  having,  and 
not  having,  a  given  attribute.  The  following  are  other 
examples.  We  cannot  represent  to  ourselves  time  or 
space  as  having  an  end.     We  cannot  represent  to  our- 

"  sense,  signify  an  act  of  the  mind  which  implies  no  belief  or  judgment  at 
"  all.  It  is  an  act  of  the  mind  by  which  nothing  is  affirmed  or  denied, 
"  and  which,  therefore,  can  neither  be  true  nor  false.  But  there  is  another 
"  and  a  very  different  meaning  of  these  words,  so  common  and  so  well 
"  authorized  in  language  that  it  cannot  be  avoided  ;  and  on  that  account 
"  we  ought  to  be  the  more  on  our  guard,  that  we  be  not  misled  by  theam- 
"  biguity.  .  .  .  When  we  would  express  our  opinion  modestly,  instead  of 
"  saying,  '  This  is  my  opinion,'  or  '  This  is  my  judgment,'  which  has  the  air 
"  of  dogmaticalness,  we  say,  '  I  conceive  it  to  be  thus — I  imagine,  or  appre- 
"  hend  it  to  be  thus  ;'  which  is  understood  as  a  modest  declaration  of  our 
"  judgment.  In  like  manner,  when  anything  is  sail  which  we  take  to  be 
"impossible,  we  say,  'We  cannot  conceive  it:'  meaning  that  we  cannot 
"  believe  it.  Thus  we  see  that  the  words  conceive,  imaijine,  apprehend, 
"  have  two  meanings,  and  are  used  to  express  two  operations  of  the  mind, 
"  which  ought  never  to  be  confounded.  Sometimes  they  express  simple 
"  apprehension,  which  implies  no  judgment  at  all ;  sometimes  they  express 
"  judgment  or  opinion.  .  .  .  When  they  are  used  to  express  simjDle  appre- 
"  hension  they  are  followed  by  a  noun  in  the  accusative  case,  which 
"  signifies  the  object  conceived  ;  but  when  they  are  used  to  express  opinion 
"  or  judgment,  they  are  commonly  followed  by  a  verb  in  the  infinitive 
'■  mood.  '  I  conceive  an  Egyptian  pyramid.'  This  implies  no  judgment. 
"  '  I  conceive  the  Egyptian  pyramids  to  be  the  most  ancient  monuments 
"  of  human  art.'  This  implies  judgment.  When  they  are  used  in  the 
"  last  sense,  the  thing  conceived  must  be  a  proposition,  because  judgment 
"  cannot  be  expressed  but  by  a  proposition." — Eeid  on  the  Intellectual 
Powers,  p.  223  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  edition,  to  which  edition  all  my 
references  will  be  made. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY    OF   THE    CONDITIONED.  87 

selves  two  and  two  as  making  five ;  nor  two  straight 
lines  as  enclosing  a  space.  We  cannot  represent  to  our- 
selves a  round  square ;  nor  a  body  all  black,  and  at  the 
same  time  all  white.  . 

These  things  are  literally  inconceivable   to    us,   our    / 
minds  and  our  experience  being  what  they  are.  Whether    ^ 
they  would  be  inconceivable  it'  our  minds  were  the  same 
but  our  experience  different,  is  open  to  discussion.     A 
distinction  may  be  made,  which,  I  think,  will  be  found 
pertinent  to  the  question.     That  the  same  thing  should 
at  once  be  and  not  be — that  identically  the  same  state- 
ment should  be  both  true  and  false-^is  not  only  incon- 
ceivable to  us,  but  we  cannot  imagrine  that  it  could  be 
made  conceivable.     We  cannot  attach  sufficient  meaning  ■ 
to  the  proposition,  to  be  able  to  represent  to  ourselves  i 
the  supposition  of  a  different  experience  on  this  matter.  I 
We  cannot  therefore  even  entertain  the  question,  whether 
the  incompatibility  is  in  the  original  structure  of  our 
minds,  or  is  only  put  there  by  our  experience.    The  case 
is  otherwise  in  all  the  other  examples  of  inconceivability. 
Our  incapacity  of  conceiving  the  same  thing  as  A  and  not 
A,  may  be  primordial ;  but  our  inability  to  conceive  A 
without  B,  is  because  A,  by  experience  or  teaching,  has 
become  inseparably  associated  with  B  :  and  our  inability 
to    conceive   A   with  C,  is,  because,  by   experience   or 
teaching,  A  has  become  inseparably  associated  with  some 
mental  representation  which  includes  the  negation  of  C.      - 
Thus  all  inconceivabiUties  may  be  reduced  to  inseparable  1/ 
association,  combined  with  the  original  inconceivability  | 
of  a  direct  contradiction.     All  the  cases  which  I  have  i 
cited  as  instances  of  inconceivability,  and  which  are  the 
strongest  I  could  have  chosen,  may  be  resolved  in  this    q^   j 
manner.      We    cannot  conceive   a   round    square,    not  |   f((3^ 
merely  because  no  such  object  has  ever  presented  itself 
in   our   experience,    for   that   would    not    be    enough. 
Neither,   for  anything  we  know,  are  the  two  ideas  in 
themselves  incompatible.     To  conceive  a  round  square, 
or  to  conceive  a  body  all  black  and  yet  all  white,  would 
^nlybe  to  conceive  two  different  sensations  as  produced 


88  THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF   THE    CONDITIONED, 

in  US  simultaneously  by  the  same  object ;  a  conception 
familiar  to  our  experience  ;  and  we  should  probably  be 
as  well  able  to  conceive  a  round  square  as  a  hard  square, 
or  a  heavy  square,  if  it  were  not  that,  in  our  uniform 
experience,  at  the  instant  when  a  thing  begins  to  be 
round  it  ceases  to  be  square,  so  that  the  beginning 
of  the  one  impression  is  inseparably  associated  with  the 
departure  or  cessation  of  the  other.*  Thus  our  inability 
\  to  form  a  conception  always  arises  from  our  being  com- 
pelled to  form  another  contradictory  to  it.  We  cannot 
conceive  time  or  space  as  having  an  end,  because  the 
idea  of  any  portion  whatever  of  time  or  space  is  insepa- 
rably associated  with  the  idea  of  a  time  or  space  beyond 
it.  We  cannot  conceive  two  and  two  as  five,  because 
an  inseparable  association  compels  us  to  conceive  it  as 
four;  and  it  cannot  be  conceived  as  both,  because  four 
and  five,  like  round  and  square,  are  so  related  in  our 
experience,  that  each  is  associated  with  the  cessation,  or 
removal,  of  the  other.  We  cannot  conceive  two  straight 
lines  as  enclosing  a  space,  because  enclosing  a  space 
means  approaching  and  meeting  a  second  time ;  and  the 
mental  image  of  two  straight  lines  which  have  once 
met  is  inseparably  associated  with  the  representation  of 
them  as  diverging.  Thus  it  is  not  wholly  without 
ground  that  the  notion  of  a  round  square,  and  the 
assertion  that  two  and  two  make  five,  or  that  two 
straight  lines  can  enclose  a  space,  are  said,  in  common 
and  even  in  scientific  parlance,  to  involve  a  contradic- 
tion.    The  statement  is  not  logically  correct,  for  contra- 

*  It  has  been  remarked  to  me  by  a  correspondent,  that  a  round  square 
differs  from  a  bard  square  or  a  beavy  square  in  this  respect,  that  the  two 
sensations  or  sets  of  sensations  supposed  to  be  joined  in  the  first-named 
combination  are  affections  of  the  same  nerves,  and  therefore,  being  dif- 
ferent affections,  are  mutually  incompatible  by  our  organic  constitution, 
and  could  not  be  made  compatible  by  any  change  in  the  arrangements  of 
external  nature.  This  is  probably  true,  and  may  be  the  physical  reason 
why  when  a  thing  begins  to  be  perceived  as  round  it  ceases  to  be  perceived 
as  square ;  but  it  is  not  the  less  true  that  this  mere  fact  suffices,  under  the 
laws  of  association,  to  account  for  the  inconceivability  of  the  combination. 
I  am  willing,  however,  to  admit,  as  suggested  by  my  correspondent,  that 
"  if  the  imagination  employs  the  organism  in  its  representations,"  which 
it  probably  does,  "what  is  originally  unperceivable  in  consequence  of 
organic  laws  "  may  also  be  "  originally  unimaginable." 


THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF    THE    CONDITIONED.  89 

diction  is  only  between  a  positive  representation  and  its  'i 
negative.       But   the    impossibility  of   uniting  contra- 
dictory conceptions  in  the    same  representation,  is  the  , 
real  ground  of  the  inconceivability  in  these  cases.     And 
we  should  probably  have  no  difficulty  in  putting  together  I 
the  two  ideas  supposed  to  be  incompatible,  if  our  expe- 
rience had  not  tirst  inseparably  associated  one  of  them  ; 
with  the  contradictory  of  the  other.* 

*  That  tlie  reverse  of  the  most  familiar  principles  of  arithmetic  and 
geometry  might  have  been  made  conceivable,  even  to  our  present  mental 
faculties,  if  those  faculties  had  coexisted  with  a  totally  different  constitu- 
tion of  external  nature,  is  ingeniously  shown  in  the  concluding  paper  of  a 
recent  volume,  anonymous,  but  of  known  authorship,  "Essays,  by  a 
Barrister." 

"  Consider  this  case.  There  is  a  world  in  which,  whenever  two  pairs  of 
"  things  are  either  placed  in  proximity  or  are  contemplated  together,  a 
"  fifth  thing  is  immediately  created  and  brought  within  the  contempla- 
"tion  of  the  mind  engaged  in  putting  two  and  two  together.  This  is 
"  surely  neither  inconceivable,  for  we  can  readily  conceive  the  result  by 
"  thinking  of  common  puzzle  tricks,  nor  can  it  be  said  to  be  beyond  the 
"  power  of  Omnipotence.  Yet  in  such  a  world  surely  two  and  two  would 
"  make  five.     That  is,  the  result  to  the  mind  of  contemplating  two  two's  (rw-wt 

"  would  be  to  count  five.    This  shows  that  it  is  not  inconceivable  that  twos"^*  ■~tfc+ 
"  and  two  might  make  five  :  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  perfectly  easy  j'****"*'^*.    ^ 
"to  see  why  in  this  world  we  are  absolutely  certain  that  two  and  two [ V*^Ji- "-^^ 
"  make  four.     There  is  probably  not  an  instant  of  our  lives  in  which  we    ■tfw*  vCJX 
"  are  not  experiencing  the  fact.     We  see  it  whenever  we  count  four  books,    (^^{^.(..^ 
"  four  tables  or  chairs,  four  men  in  the  street,  or  the  four  corners  of  a    V^r-  _    .^ 
"  paving  stone,  and  we  feel  more  sure  of  it  than  of  the  rising  of  the  sun    »^*^"'  *• 
"  to-morrow,  because  our  experience  upon  the  subject  is  so  much  wider 
"  and  applies  to  such  an  infinitely  greater  number  of  cases.   Nor  is  it  true 
"that  every  one  who  has  once  been  brought  to  see  it,  is  equally  sure  of  it. 
"  A  boy  who  has  just  learnt  the  multipUcation  table  is  pretty  sure  that    - 
"  twice  two  are  four,  but  is  often  extremely  doubtful  whether  seven  times  ■ 
"  nine  are  sixty-three.     If  his  teacher  told  him  that  twice  two  made  five, 
"  his  certainty  would  be  greatly  impaired. 

"  It  would  also  be  possible  to  put  a  case  of  a  world  in  which  two  straight 
"  lines  should  be  universally  supposed  to  include  a  space.  Imagine  a  man 
"  who  had  never  had  any  experience  of  straight  lines  through  the  medium 
"  of  any  sense  whatever,  suddenly  placed  upon  a  railway  stretching  out 
"  on  a  perfectly  straight  line  to  an  indefinite  distance  in  each  direction. 
"  He  would  see  the  rail.<»,  which  would  be  the  first  straight  lines  he  had 
"  ever  seen,  apparently  meeting,  or  at  least  tending  to  meet  at  each 
"  horizon ;  and  he  would  thus  infer,  in  the  absence  of  all  other  experience, 
"  that  they  actually  did  enclose  a  space,  when  produced  far  enough. 
"  Experience  alone  could  undeceive  him.  A  world  in  which  every  object 
"  was  round,  with  the  single  exception  of  a  straight  inaccessible  railway, 
"  would  be  a  world  in  which  every  one  would  believe  that  two  straight 
"  lines  enclosed  a  space.  In  such  a  world,  thereFore,  the  impossibilitpr  of 
"  conceiving  that  two  straight  lines  can  enclose  a  space  would  not  exist." 

In  the  "  Geometry  of  Visibles  "  which  forms  part  of  Roid'a  "  Inquiry 


90  THE  PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    CONDITIONED. 

Thus  far,  of  the  first  kind  of  Inconceivability ;  the 
first  and  most  proper  meaning  in  which  the  word  is  used. 
But  there  is  another  meaning,  in  which  things  are  often 
said  to  be  inconceivable  which   the  mind  is   under   no 


into  the  Human  Mind,"  it  is  contended  tliat  if  we  had  the  sense  of  sight, 
but  not  that  of  touch,  it  would  appear  to  us  that  "'  every  right  line  being 
"  produced  will  at  last  return  into  itself,"  and  that  "  an^^  two  right  lines 
"  being  produced  will  meet  in  two  points."  Ch.  vi.,  Sect.  9  (p.  1+8).  The 
author  adds,  that  persons  thus  constituted  would  firmly  believe  "  that 
"  two  or  more  bodies  may  exist  in  the  same  place."  For  this  they  woukl 
"  have  the  testimony  of  sense,"  and  coiild  "  no  more  doubt  of  it  than  they 
"  can  doubt  whether  they  have  any  perception  at  all,  since  they  would 
"  often  see  two  bodies  meet  and  coincide  in  the  same  place,  and  separate 
"  again,  without  having  undergone  any  change  in  their  sensible  qualities 
"  by  this  penetration."     (P.  151.) 

Hardly  any  part  of  the  present  volume  has  been  so  maltreated,  by  so 
great  a  number  of  critics,  as  the  illiastrations  here  quoted  from  an  able 
and  highly  instructed  cotemporary  thinker ;  which,  as  they  were  neither 
designed  by  their  author  nor  cited  by  me  as  anything  more  than  illustra- 
tions, I  do  not  deem  it  necessary  to  take  up  space  by  defending.  When 
a  selection  must  be  made,  one  is  obliged  to  consider  what  one  can  best 
spare. 

[Some  of  my  correspondents,  looking  upon  the  illustrations  by  "A 
"Barrister"  as  (what  they  are  not)  an  essential  part  of  my  argument, 
think  me  bound  either  to  defend  them  or  to  give  them  up.  As  they  are, 
in  my  opinion,  perfectly  defensible,  I  am  ready,  thus  challenged,  to  stand 
up  for  them.  And  I  select,  among  the  attacks  made  on  them,  that  of  Dr. 
M'Cosh  (Examination  of  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill's  Philosophy,  pp.  209-211),  as  one 
of  the  fairest,  and  including  what  is  most  worthy  of  notice  in  the  others. 
Of  the  first  illustration.  Dr.  M'Cosh  says  : — 

"  Were  we  placed  in  a  world  in  which  two  pairs  of  things  were  always 
"  followed  by  a  fifth  thing,  we  might  be  disposed  to  believe  that  the  pairs 
"  caused  the  fifth  thing,  or  that  there  was  some  prearranged  disposition 
"  of  things  producing  them  together ;  but  we  could  not  be  made  to  judge 
"  that  2+2=5,  or  that  the  fifth  thing  is  not  a  different  thing  from  the  two 
"  and  the  two.  On  the  other  supposition  put,  of  the  two  pairs  always 
"  suggesting  a  fifth,  we  should  explain  their  recurrence  by  some  law  of 
"  association,  but  we  would  not  confound  the  5  with  the  2+2,  or  think 
"  that  the  two  pairs  could  make  five." 

This  passage  is  a  correct  description  of  what  would  happen  if  the  pre- 
sentatioa  of  the  fifth  thing  were  posterior,  by  a  perceptible  interval,  to 
the  juxtaposition  of  the  two  pairs,  so  that  we  should  have  time  to  judge 
that  the  two  and  two  make  four  previously  to  perceiving  the  fifth.  But 
the  supposition  is  that  the  production  of  the  fifth  is  so  instantaneous  in 
the  very  act  of  seeing,  that  we  never  should  see  the  four  things  by  them- 
selves as  four :  the  fifth  thing  would  be  inseparably  involved  in  the  act  of 
perception  by  which  we  should  ascertain  the  sum  of  the  two  pairs.  I 
confess  it  seems  to  me  that  in  this  case  we  should  have  an  apparent 
intuition  of  two  and  two  making  five. 

To  the  second  illustration,  Dr.  M'Cosh  replies :  "  I  allow  that  this 
"  person  as  he  looked  one  way,  would  see  a  figure  presented  to  the  eye  of 
"  two  straight  lines  approaching  nearer  each  other  ;  and  that  as  he  looked 


THE   PHILOSOPHY    OF   THE    CONDITIONED.  91 

incapacity  of  representing  to  itself  in  an  image.  It  is  1  /  m  \ 
often  said,  that  we  are  unable  to  conceive  as  possible  that  /  ^j' 
which,  in  itself,  we  are  perfectly  well  able  to  conceive  : 
we  are  able,  it  is  admitted,  to  conceive  it  as  an  imaginary 

"  the  other  way  he  would  see  a  like  figure.  But  I  deny  that  in  combining 
"  the  two  views  he  would  ever  decide  that  the  four  Hues  seen,  the  two 
"  seen  first  and  the  two  seen  second,  make  only  two  straight  lines.  In 
**  uniting  the  two  perceptions  in  thought,  he  would  certainly  place  a  bend 
"  or  a  turn  somewhere,  possibly  at  the  spot  from  which  he  took  the  two 
"  views.  He  would  continue  to  do  so  till  he  realized  that  the  lines  seen 
"  on  either  side  did  not  in  fact  approach  nearer  each  other.  Or,  to  state 
"  the  whole  phenomenon  with  more  scientific  accuracy  :  Intuitively,  and 
"  to  a  person  who  had  not  acquired  the  knowledge  of  distance  by  ex- 
"  perience,  the  two  views  would  appear  to  be  each  of  two  lines  approaching 
"  nearer  each  other ;  but  without  his  being  at  all  cognisant  of  the  relation 
"  of  the  two  views,  or  of  one  part  of  the  lines  being  further  removed  from 
"  him  than  another.  As  experience  told  him  that  the  lines  receded  from 
"  him  on  each  side,  he  would  contrive  some  means  of  combining  his  obser- 
"  vations,  probably  in  the  way  above  indicated;  but  he  never  could  make 
"  two  straight  lines  enclose  a  space." 

Now  it  seems  to  me  that  the  supposed  percipient  cauld  not  account  for 
his  apparent  perceptions  in  the  manner  indicated  ;  he  could  not  believe 
that  there  was  a  turn  or  a  bend  anywhere.  "  At  the  spot  from  which  he 
took  the  two  views"  he  would  have  the  evidence  of  his  senses  that  there 
was  no  bend.  Looking  along  the  interval  between  the  lines,  he  would 
again  have  the  evidence  of  sense  that  they  were  not  deflected  either  way. 
but  maintained  an  uniform  direction.  Until  therefore,  experience  of  the 
laws  of  perspective  had  corrected  his  judgment,  he  would  have  the  ap- 
parent evidence  of  his  senses  that  two  straight  lines  met  in  two  points. 
This  appearance,  until  shown  by  further  experience  to  be  an  illusion 
would  probably  decide  his  belief  :  and  any  doubts  that  might  be  raised  by  a 
contemplation  of  istraight  lines  which  were  nearer  to  him,  would  be  silenced 
by  the  supposition  that  two  straight  lines  wdl  inclose  a  space  if  only  thej 
are  produced  far  enough. 

Dr.  M'Cosh  may  himself  be  cited  as  a  witness  to  the  intrinsic  possi- 
bility of  conceiving  combinations  which  I  should  have  thought  were  uni- 
versally regarded  as  inconceivable.  When  distinguishing  between  the  two 
meanings  of  inconceivable  (in  pp.  234,  235  of  his  book)  he  says :  "  We 
"  cannot  be  made  to  decide  or  believe  that  Cleopatra's  Needle  should  be 
"  in  Paris  and  Egypt  at  the  same  time ;  yet  with  some  difficulty  we  can 
"  simultaneously  image  it  in  both  places."  Now  when  we  consider  that 
in  order  really  to  image  the  same  Needle  (and  not  two  Needles  exactly 
similar)  in  two  places  at  once  we  must  actually  imagine  the  two  places, 
Paris  and  Alexandria,  superposed  upon  one  another  and  occupying  the 
same  portion  of  space,  it  seems  to  me  that  this  conception  is  quite  as 
impossible  to  us  as  the  reverse  of  a  geometrical  axiom  ;  and  is,  indeed,  of 
much  the  same  character.] 

The  "  Geometry  of  Visibles "  has  been  noticed  only  by  Dr.  M'Cosh 
(pp.  211-213),  who  rejects  it,  as  founded  on  the  erroneous  doctrine  (as  he 
considers  it)  that  we  cannot  perceive  by  sight  the  third  dimension  of 
space.  I  regard  this,  on  the  contrary,  as  not  only  a  true  doctrine,  but 
one  from  wluch  Dr.  M'Cosh's  own  opinion  does  not  materially  diflfer :  and 


92  THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF    THK    CONDITIONED. 

object,  but  unable  to  conceive  it  realized.  Tliis  extends 
the  term  inconceivable  to  every  combination  of  facts 
which  to  the  mind  simply  contemplating  it,  appears  in- 
credible.* It  was  in  this  sense  that  Antipodes  were  in- 
conceivable. They  could  be  figured  iii  imagination  ; 
they  could  even  be  painted,  or  modelled  in  clay.  The 
mind  could  put  the  parts  of  the  conception  together,  but 
could  not  realize  the  combination  as  one  which  could 
exist  in  nature.  The  cause  of"  the  inability  was  the 
powerful  tendency,  generated  by  experience,  to  expect 
falling  off,  when  a  body,  not  of  adhesive  quality,  was  in 
contact  only  with  the  under  side  of  another  body.  The 
association  was  not  so  powerful  as  to  disable  the  mind 
from  conceiving  the  body  as  holding  on  ;  doubtless  be- 
cause  other  facts  of  our  experience  afforded  models  on 

if  it  be  true,  it  is  impossible  to  resist  Eeid's  conclusion,  that  to  beings 
possessing  only  the  sense  ot"  sight,  the  paradoxes  here  quoted,  and  several 
others,  would  be  truths  of  intuition — self-evident  truths. 

[Dr.  Ward,  in  the  Dublin  Review,  contests  this  doctrine ;  and  an  argu- 
ment against  it  has  been  sent  to  me  by  the  intelligent  and  instructed 
correspondent  already  once  referred  to.  For  a  reply  I  might  refer  them 
to  the  chapter  on  the  Geometry  of  Visibles,  in  Eeid's  work ;  but  I  will 
point  out,  m  few  words,  where  I  think  they  are  in  error.  They  contend 
that  Eeid's  Idomenians  would  not  possess  the  notion  which  we  attach  to 
the  term  straight  line,  but  would  call  by  that  name  what  they  would  reallj' 
image  to  themselves  as  a  circular  arc.  But  Eeid's  position  (and  he  assigns 
good  reasons  for  it)  is  the  reverse  of  this ;  that  what  we,  who  have  the 
sense  of  touch,  perceive  as  a  circular  arc  with  ourselves  in  the  centre, 
Idomenians  could  only  perceive  as  a  straight  line;  and  that,  consequently, 
all  the  appearances  which  Eeid  enumerates  would  be  by  them  appre- 
hended, and,  as  they  would  think,  perceived,  as  phenomena  of  straight 
lines. 

Dr.  M'Cosh  also  returns  to  the  charge,  but  holds  a  different  doctrine 
from  my  other  two  critics,  being  of  opinion  that  the  Idomenians  would 
really  have  the  notion  of  a  straight  line.  For  the  consequences  of  this  I 
refer  him  back  to  Eeid.  He  adds,  that  as  touch  alone  can  reveal  to  us 
impenetrability,  the  Idomenians  could  argue  nothing  as  to  bodies  pene- 
trating one  another.  But,  they  could  have  the  conception  of  the  only 
penetration  Eeid  contended  for,  namely,  of  bodies  meeting  and  coinciding 
m  the  same  place,  and  separating  again  without  alteration.  And  for  this 
they  would  hare  the  evidence  of  sense.  The  fact  is  literally  true  of  the 
visual  images,  which  to  them  would  be  the  whole  bodies ;  and  as  they 
could  form  no  notion  of  one  thing  passing  behind  another,  their  only 
impression  would  be  of  penetration.] 

*  I  do  not  mean,  which  is  really  incredible,  as  Mr.  Mansel,  in  his  re- 
joinder, supposes  I  do,  and  consequently  charges  me  with  imputing  to  Sir 
VV.  Hamilton  that  in  the  Law  of  the  Conditioned  he  maintains  that  of 
two  incredible  alternatives  one  must  be  believed. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF    THE   CONDITIONED.  93 

which  such  a  conception  could  be  framed.  But  though 
not  disabled  from  conceiving  the  combination,  the  mind 
was  disabled  from  believing  it.  The  difference  between 
belief  and  conception,  and  between  the  conditions  of 
belief  and  those  of  simple  conception,  are  psychological 
questions  into  which  I  do  not  enter.  It  is  sufficient 
that  inability  to  believe  can  coexist  with  ability  to  con- 
ceive, and  that  a  mental  association  between  two  facts 
which  is  not  intense  enough  to  make  their  separation 
unimaginable,  may  yet  create,  and,  if  there  are  no  coun- 
ter associations,  alwaj^s  does  create,  more  or  less  of  diffi- 
culty in  believing  that  the  two  can  exist  apart:  a  difficulty 
often  amounting  to  a  local  or  temporary  impossibility. 

This  is  the  second  meaning  of  Inconceivability;  which 
by  Reid  is  carefuU}^  distinguished  from  the  first,  but  his 
editor  Sir  W.  Hamilton  employs  the  word  in  both  senses 
indiscriminately.*  How  he  came  to  miss  the  distinction 
is  tolerably  obvious  to  any  one  who  is  familiar  with  his 
writings,  and  especiall}'  with  his  theory  of  Judgment ; 
but  needs  not  be  pointed  out  here.  It  is  more  remark- 
able that  he  gives  to  the  term  a  third  sense,  answering:  to 
a  third  signification  of  the  verb  "  to  conceive."  To  con- 
ceive any  thing,  has  with  him  not  only  its  two  ordinary 
meanings — to  represent  the  thing  as  an  image,  and  to  be 
able  to  realize  it  as  possible — but  an  additional  one,  wliicii 

*  It  is  curious  that  Dr.  M'Cosli,  with  this  volume  before  him,  and  occu- 
pied in  criticizing  it,  did  not  find  out  until  his  book  was  passing  through 
the  press,  and  then  only  from  the  sixth  edition  of  my  '*  System  of  Logic," 
that  I  was  aware  of  the  diflerence  between  these  two  meanings  of  "  to 
conceive  "  (M'Cosh,  p.  24'1,  note).  He  consequently  thought  it  necessary  to 
tell  me,  what  I  had  myself  stated  in  the  text,  that  Antipodes  were  incon- 
ceivable only  in  the  second  sense. 

Dr.  M'Cosh  continually  charges  me  with  confounding  the  two  meanings 
an  1  arguing  from  one  of  them  to  the  other.     But  he  must  be  well  aware 
that  intuitional  philosophers  in  general  (I  do  not  say  that  Dr.  M'Cosh) 
assign  as  the  sufficient,  and  conclusive  proof  of  inconceivability  in  the  one     , 
sense,  inconceivability  in  the  other.     They  argue  that  a  proposition  must 
be  true,  and  ought  to  be  believed — on  the  ground  that  we  cannot  conceive 
its  opposite,  meaning  that  we  cannot  frame  a  mental  representation  of  it.    ^ 
It  is  therefore  quite  pertinent  to  show  (when  it  can  be  done)  that  this   I 
inability  to  join  the  ideas  together  is  not  inherent  in  our  constitution,  but.    , 
is  accounted  for  by  the  conditions  of  our  experience ;  for  to  shew  this,  is  to 
destroy  the  argument  principally  relied  on  as  a  proof  that  the  judgment 
is  a  necessary  one. 


"^ 


94  THE   PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    CONDITIONED. 

y^  he  denotes  by  various  phrases.  One  of  his  common  ex- 
pressions for  it  is,  "  to  construe  to  the  mind  in  thought." 
This,  he  often  says,  can  only  be  done  "  through  a  higher 
"notion."  "We*  think,  we  conceive,  we  comprehend  a 
"thing  only  as  we  think  it  as  within  or  under  some- 
"  thing  else."  So  that  a  fact,  or  a  supposition,  is  con- 
ceivable or  comprehensible  by  us  (conceive  and  compre- 
hend being  with  him  in  this  case  synonymous)  only  by 
being  reduced  to  some  more  general  fact,  as  a  particular 
case  under  it.  Again, f  "to  conceive  the  possibility  "  of 
a  thing,  is  defined  "  conceiving  it  as  the  consequent  of  a 
"  certain  reasun."  The  inconceivable,  in  this  third  sense, 
is  simply  the  inexplicable.  Accordingly  all  first  truths 
are,  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  inconceivable.  "The| 
"  primary  data  of  consciousness,  as  themselves  the  con- 
"  ditions  under  which  all  else  is  comprehended,  are  ne- 
"  cessarily  themselves  incomprehensible.  .  .  .  that  is  .  .  . 
I  "  we  are  unable  to  conceive  through  a  higher  notion  how 
j  "  that  is  possible,  which  the  deliverance  avouches  actually 
^  "to  be."  And  we  shall  find  him  arguing  things  to  be 
inconceivable,  merely  on  the  ground  that  we  have  no 
higher  notion  under  which  to  class  them.  This  use  of 
the  word  inconceivable,  being  a  complete  perversion  of 
it  from  its  established  meanings,  I  decline  to  recognise. 
If  all  the  general  truths  which  we  are  most  certain  of 
are  to  be  called  inconceivable,  the  word  no  longer  serves 
any  purpose.  Inconceivable  is  not  to  be  confounded 
with  unprovable,  or  unanalysable.  A  truth  which  is  not 
inconceivable  in  either  of  the  received  meanings  of  the 
term — a  truth  which  is  completely  apprehended,  and 
without  difficulty  believed,  I  cannot  consent  to  call  in- 
conceivable merely  because  we  cannot  account  for  it,  or 
deduce  it  from  a  higher  truth. ^ 

*  Lectures,  iii.  102.  _     f  Ibid.  p.  100. 

X  Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  746. 
§  Mr.  Mansel  refuses  to  admit  (pp.  13i  et  seqq  )  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
confounds  these  different  senses  of  the  word  Conception,  and  asserts  that 
he  always  adheies  to  the  meaning  indicated  by  him  in  a  foot-note  to  Reid 
(p.  377),  and  answering  to  the  first  meaning  of  inconceivable,  namely, 
unimaginable.     Of  the  second  meaning  Mr.  Mansel  says  (p.  132),  "When 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    CONDITIONED.  95 

These  being  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  tliree  kinds  of  ineon-  j 
ceivability  ;  is  the  inconceivability  of  a  proposition  in  [ 
any  of  these  senses,  consistent  with  believing  it  to  be  j 
true  ?     Tiie  third   kind  is  avowedly  compatible  not  only  : 

"  Hamilton  speaks  of  being  '  unable  to  conceive  as  possible,'  he  does  not 
"  mean,  as  Mr.  Mill  supposes,  pbysically  possible  under  the  law  of  gravi- 
"  tation  or  some  other  law  of  matter,  but  mentally  possible  as  a  represen- 
"  tation  or  image  ;  and  thus  the  supposed  second  sense  is  identical  with 
"  the  first."  According  to  this  interpretation,  when  Sir  W.  Hamiltoti 
says  of  any  thing  that  it  cannot  be  conceived  as  possible,  he  does  not  mean 
possible  in  fact,  but  possible  to  thou.ht.  in  other  words,  that  it  cannot  be 
conceived  as  conceivable.  I,  however,  do  Sir  W.  Hamilton  the  justice  of 
beUeving,  that  when  he  added  the  words  "  as  possible"  to  the  word  con- 
ceive, he  intended  to  add  something  to  the  idea.  Accordingly  he  uses  the 
phrases  "  to  understand  as  possible,"  "  to  comprehend  as  possible,"  as 
equivalents  for  "to  conceive  as  possible,"  I  believe  that  by  "  possible" 
he  meant,  as  people  usually  do,  possible  in  fact.  And  I  have  the  authority 
of  Mr.  Mansel  himself  for  so  thinking.  Mr.  Mansel,  in  another  place 
(p.  36)  expresses  what  was  probably  the  real  meaning  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
and  laments  that  Sir  W  Hamilton  did  not  state  it  distinctly.  "  To  con- 
"  ceive  a  thing  as  possible,"  says  Mr.  Mansel,  "  we  must  conceive  the  man- 
*'  ner  in  which  it  is  possible  :  but  we  may  beheve  in  the  fact  without  being 
"  able  to  conceive  the  manner."  This  makes  uo  sense  if  understood  as 
Mr.  Mansel,  in  his  rejoinder,  says  that  it  ought  to  be — "  mentally  possible 
*'  as  a  notion,  not  physically  possible  as  a  fact."  There  is  no  manner  c>f 
being  possible  as  a  mere  notion  -.  the  elements  of  the  notion  can  be  put 
toifether  in  the  mind,  or  they  cannot.  A  manner  of  being  possible  can 
only  refer  to  possibility  as  a  fact.  When  people  say  that  they  cannot 
conceive  Aoi/;  a  thing  is  possible,  they  always  mean,  that  but  for  evidence 
to  the  contrary,  they  should  have  supposed  it  impossible.  And  this  I 
always  find  to  be  the  case  when  Sir  W.  Hamilton  uses  the  phrase.  I  know  . 
not  of  any  manner  of  a  possibility  that  would  enable  us  to  conceive  the 
thing  "as  possible"  unless  *  it  removed  some  obstacle  to  believing  that 
the  thing  is  possible.  Such,  for  instance,  would  be  the  case,  if  we  have 
found  or  imagined  something  which  is  capable  of  causing  the  thing  ;  or 
some  means  or  mechanism  by  which  it  could  be  brought  about  (the 
desideratum  in  Mr.  Mansel's  illustration  of  a  being  who  sees  without 
eyes) ;  or  if  we  have  had  an  actual  intuition  of  the  thing  as  existing : 
which,  when  sufficiently  familiar,  makes  it  no  longer  seem  to  require  any 
ground  of  possibility  beyond  the  fact  itself.  In  short,  the  how  of  its 
existence,  which  enables  us  to  conceive  it  as  possible,  must  be  a  how  which 
affords  at  least  a  semblance  of  explanation  of  Mr.  Mansel's  that.  This  is 
distinctly  recognised  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  in  one  of  the  passages  I  have 
quoted,  in  which  "  to  conceive  the  possibility"  of  a  thing  is  defined  "  con- 
ceiving it  as  the  consequent  of  a  certain  reason."  By  conceiving  a  thing 
as  possible,  he  meant  apprehending  some  fact,  or  imagining  some  hy- 
pothesis, which  would  explain  its  possibility  ;  which  would  be,  in  the  / 
Leibnitzian  sense,  its  Sufficient  Eeason.  For,  an  explanation,  even 
hypothetical,  of  a  thing  which  previously  seemed  to  admit  of  none, 
removes  a  difficulty  in  believing  it.  We  have  a  natural  tendency  to  dis- 
believe anything  which,  while  it  has  never  been  presented  in  our  ex- 
perience, also  contradicts  our  habitual  associations  :  but  the  suggestion  to 
our  mind  of  some  possible  conditions  which  would  be  a  Sufficient  Beason 


96  THE  PHILOSOPHY    OF   THE    CONDITIONED. 

with  belief,  but  with  our  strongest  and   most  natural 
beliefs.     An  inconceivable  of  the   second  kind   can   not 
only  be  believed,  but  believed  with  full  understanding. 
In  this  case  we  are  perfectly  able  to  represent  to  ourselves 
mentally  what  is  said  to  be  inconceivable  ;  only,  from  an 
association  in  our  mind,  it  does  not  look  credible  :  but, 
this    association   being   the  result  of  experience   or  of 
teaching,  contrary  experience  or  teaching  is  able  to  dis- 
solve it ;  and  even  before  this  has  been  done — while  the 
thing  still  feels  incredible,  the  intellect  may,  on  sufficient 
evidence,  accept  it  as  true.    An  inconceivable  of  the  first 
kind,  inconceivable  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term — 
that  which  the  mind  is   actually  unable  to  put  together 
in  a  representation — may  nevertheless  be  believed,  if  we 
I  attach  any  meaning  to  it,  but  cannot  be  said  to  be  believed 
with  understanding.     We    cannot  believe  it  on   direct 
evidence,  i.e.  through  its  being  presented  in  our  expe- 
rience, for  if  it  were  so  presented  it  would  immediately 
cease  to  be  inconceivable.     We  may  believe  it  because 
its  falsity  would  be   inconsistent  with   something  which 
we  otherwise   know  to  be  true.     Or  we  may  believe  it 
because  it  is  affirmed  by  some  one  wiser  than  ourselves, 
who,  we  suppose,  may  have   had  the  experience  which 
has  not  reached  us,  and  to  whom  it  may  thus  have  be- 
come  conceivable.     But   the   belief  is    without   under- 
standing,  for  we  form  no  mental  picture    of  what  we 
believe.     We  do  not  so  much  believe  the  fact,  as  believe 
that  we  should  believe  it  if  we  could  have   the  needful 
presentation  in   our  experience ;   and   that  some   other 
being  has,  or  may  have,  had  that  presentation.     Our  in- 
ability to  conceive  it,  is   no  argument  whatever  for  its 
being  false,  and  no  hindrance  to  our  believing  it,  to  the 
above-mentioned  extent. 

But  though  facts,  which  we  cannot  join  together  in  an 

for  its  existence,  takes  away  its  incredibility,  and  enables  us  to  "conceive 
'•  it  as  possible."  This  view  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  meaning  explains, 
tbougli  it  does  not  justify,  his  using  the  term  in  its  third  signification ; 
which  Mr.  Mansel  (p.  132)  also  endeavours  to  reduce  to  the  first,  but 
which  may  be  better  identified  with  the  second :  for  of  First  Truths  also 
it  is  impossible  to  assign  any  Sufficient  Reason. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY    OF   THE   CONDITIONED.  97 

image,  may  be  united  in  the  universe,  and  tliou^h  we 
may  have  sufficient  ground  for  believing  that  they  are 
SO  united  in  point  of  fact,  it  is  impossible  to  believe  a 
proposition  which  conveys  to  us  no  meaning  at  all.  If 
any  one  says  to  me,  Humpty  Dumpty  is  an  Abracadabra, 
I  neither  know  what  is  meant  by  an  Abracadabra,  nor 
what  is  meant  by  Humpty  Dumpty,  I  may,  if  I  have 
confidence  in  my  informant,  believe  that  he  means  some- 
thing, and  that  the  something  which  he  means  is  pro- 
bably true  :  but  I  do  not  believe  tlie  very  thing  which 
he  means,  since  I  am  entirely  ignorant  what  it  is.  Pro- 
positions of  this  kind,  the  unraeaningness  of  which  lies 
in  the  subject  or  predicate,  are  not  those  generally 
described  as  inconceivable.  The  unmeaning  proposi- 
tions spoken  of  under  that  name,  are  usually  those 
which  involve  contradictions.  That  the  same  thing  is 
and  is  not — that  it  did  and  did  not  rain  at  the  same 
time  and  place,  that  a  man  is  both  alive  and  not  alive, 
are  forms  of  words  which  carry  no  signification  to  my 
mind.  As  Sir  W.  Hamilton  truly  says,*  one  half  of  the 
statement  simply  sublates  or  takes  away  the  meaning 
which  the  other  half  has  laid  down.  The  unmeaning- 
ness  here  resides  in  the  copula.  The  word  is  has  no 
meaning,  except  as  exclusive  of  is  not.  The  case  is  more 
hopeless  than  that  of  Humpty  Dumpty,  for  no  explana;- 
tion,  by  the  speaker  of  what  the  words  mean  can  make 
the  assertion  intelligible.  Whatever  may  be  meant  by  a 
man,  and  whatever  maj  be  meant  by  alive,  the  statement 
that  a  man  can  be  alive  and  not  alive  is  equally  without 
meaning  to  me.  I  cannot  make  out  anything  which  the 
speaker  intends  me  to  believe.  The  sentence  affirms 
nothing  of  which  my  mind  can  take  hold.  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  indeed,  maintains  the  contrary.  He  says,t 
"  When  we  conceive  the  proposition  that  A  is  not  A,  we 
"  clearly  comprehend  the  separate  meaning  of  the  terms 
"  J  and  not  A,  and  also  the  import  of  the  assertion  of 
"  their  identity."    We  comprehend  the  separate  meaning 

*  Lectures,  iii.  99.  t  Ibid.  p.  113. 


ya      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  CONDITIONED. 

!of  the  terms,  but  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  assertion, 
I  think  we   only  comprehend  what  the  same  form   of 
s  words  would  mean  in  another  case.     The  very  import  of 
I  the    form    of  words    is    inconsistent   with    its    meaning 
i  anything    when    applied    to   terms   of    this   particular 
I  kind.     Let  any  one  who  doubts  this,  attempt  to  define 
'  what  is    meant  by  applying   a  predicate  to  a  subject, 
when  the  predicate  and  the  subject  are   the  negation 
of  one  another.     To  make  sense  of  the  assertion,  some 
new  meaning  must  be  attached  to  is  or  is  not,  and  if  this 
,  be  done  the  proposition  is  no  longer  the  one  presented 
for  our  assent.     Here,  therefore,  is  one  kind  of  incon- 
ceivable  proposition  which  nothing  whatever  can  make 
j^  credible  to  us.     Not  being  able  to  attach  any  meaning 
to  the  proposition,  we  are  equally  incompetent  to  assert 
that  it  is,  or  that  it  is   not,  possible  in  itself     But  we 
have  not  the  power  of  believing  it ;  and  there  the  matter 
must  rest. 

We  are  now  prepared  to  enter  on  the  peculiar  doctrine 
of  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  called  the  Philosophy  of  the  Con- 
ditioned. Not  content  with  maintaining  that  things 
which  from  the  natural  and  fundamental  laws  of  the 
human  mind,  are  for  ever  inconceivable  to  us,  may,  for 
aught  we  know,  be  true,  he  goes  farther,  and  says,  we 
know  that  many  such  things  are  true.  "  Things*  there 
"  are  which  may,  nay  musi,  be  true,  of  which  the  under- 
"  standing  is  wholly  unable  to  construe  to  itself  the  pos- 
"  sibility."  Of  what  nature  these  things  are,  is  declared 
in  many  parts  of  his  writings,  in  the  form  of  a  general 
law.  It  is  thus  stated  in  the  review  of  Cousin  :t  "  The 
"  Conditioned  is  the  mean  between  the  two  extremes — 
"  two  unconditionates,  exclusive  of  each  other,  neither 
"  of  which  can  be  conceived  as  possible,  but  of  which,  on 
■  "  the  principles  of  contradiction  and  excluded  middle, 
"one  must  be  admitted  as  necessary.  .  .  .  The  mind  i^ 
"  not  represented  as  conceiving  two  propositions  sub- 
"  versive  of  each  other  as  equally   possible ;  but  only, 

*  Discussions,  p.  624.  .  f  Ibid.  p.  16. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   THE    CONDITIONED.  99 

"  as  unable  to  understand  as  possible,  either  of  the 
"  extremes ;  one  of  which,  however,  on  the  ground  of 
"  their  mutual  repugnance,  it  is  compelled  to  recognise 
"  as  true." 

In  the  Dissertations  on  Reid*  he  enunciates,  in  still 
more  general  terms,  as  "  The  Law  of  the  Conditioned : 
"  That  all  positive  thought  lies  between  two  extrem'es, 
"  neither  of  which  we  can  conceive  as  possible,  and  yet 
"  as  mutual  contradictories,  the  one  or  the  other  we  must 
"  recognise  as  necessary."  And  it  is  (he  says)  "  from 
"  this  impotence  of  intellect "  that  "  we  are  unable  to 
"  think  aught  as  absolute.  Even  absolute  relativity 
"  is  unthinkable." 

The  doctrine  is  more  fully  expanded  in  the  Lectures 
on  LogiCjf  from  which  I  shall  quote  at  greater  length. 

"  All  that  we  can  positively  think  ....  lies  between 
"  two  opposite  poles  of  thought,  which,  as  exclusive  of 
"  each  other,  cannot,  on  the  principles  of  Identity  and 
"  Contradiction,  both  be  true,  but  of  which,  on  the  prin- 
"  ciple  of  Excluded  Middle,  one  or  the  other  must.  Let 
''  us  take,  for  example,  any  of  the  general  objects  of 
"  our  knowledge.  Let  us  take  body,  or  rather,  since 
"  body  as  extended  is  included  under  extension,  let  us 
"  take  extension  itself,  or  space.  Now  extension  alone 
"  will  exhibit  to  us  two  pairs  of  contradictory  incon- 
"  ceivables,  j  that  is,  in  all,  four  incomprehensibles,  but  of 
"  which,  though  all  are  equally  unthinkable  ....  we  are 
"  compelled,  by  the  law  of  Excluded  Middle,  to  admit 
"  some  two  as  true  and  necessary. 

"  Extension  may  be  viewed  either  as  a  whole  or  as  a 
"  part ;  and  in  each  aspect  it  affords  us  two  incogitable 
"  contradictions.  1st.  Taking  it  as  a  whole :  space,  it 
"  is  evident,  must  either  be  limited,  that  is,  have  an  end, 
"  and  circumference ;  or  unlimited,  that  is,  have  no  end, 

*  p.  911.  t  Lectures,  iii.  100,  et  seq. 

X  To  save  words  in  the  text,  I  shall  simply  indicate  in  foot-notes  the 
places  at  which  the  author  passes  from  one  of  the  three  meanings  of  the 
word  Inconceivable  to  another.  In  this  place  he  is  using  it  in  the  first 
or  second  meaning,  probably  in  the  first. 

H    2 


100  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    CONDITIONED. 

"  no  circumference.  These  are  contradictory  supposi- 
**  tions ;  both,  therefore,  cannot,  but  one  must,  be  true. 
"  Now  let  us  try  positively  to  comprehend,  positively  to 
"conceive,*  the-  possibility  of  either  of  these  two 
"  mutually  exclusive  alternatives.  Can  we  represent,  or 
"  realize  in  thought,  extension  as  absolutely  limited  ?  in 
"  other  words,  can  we  mentally  hedge  round  the  whole  of 
"  space,  conceive  t  it  absolutely  bounded,  that  is,  so  that 
"  beyond  its  boundary  there  is  no  outlying,  no  surround- 
"  ing  space  ?  This  is  impossible.  Whatever  compass  of 
"  space  we  may  enclose  by  any  limitation  of  thought, 
"  we  shall  find  that  v.'e  have  no  difficulty  in  transcend- 
"  ing  these  limits.  Nay,  we  shall  find  that  we  cannot 
"  but  transcend  them ;  for  we  are  unable  to  think  any 
"  extent  of  space  except  as  within  a  still  ulterior  space, 
"  of  which,  let  us  think  till  the  powers  of  thinking  fail, 
"  we  can  never  reach  the  circumference.  It  is  thus  im- 
"  possible  for  us  to  think  space  as  a  totality,  that  is,  as 
.  "  absolutely  bounded,  but  all-containing.  "VVe  may, 
"  therefore,  lay  down  this  first  extreme  as  inconceivable.  | 
"  We  cannot  think  space  as  limited. 

"  Let  us  now  consider  its  contradictory  :  can  we  com- 
"  prehend  the  possibility  of  infinite  or  unlimited  space  ? 
"  To  suppose  this  is  a  direct  contradiction  in  terms  ;  it  is 
"  to  comprehend  the  incomprehensible.  We  think,  we 
■'  conceive, §  we  comprehend  a  thing,  only  as  we  think  it 
"  as  within  or  under  something  else ;  but  to  do  this  of 
"  the  infinite  is  to  think  the  infinite  is  finite,  which  is 
"  contradictory  and  absurd. 

"  Now  here  it  may  be  asked,  how  have  we  then  the 
"  word  injitiite  ?  How  have  we  the  notion  which  this 
^  "  word  expresses  ?  The  answer  to  this  question  is  con- 
"  tained  in  the  distinction  of  positive  and  negative 
*'  thought.  We  have  a  positive  concept  of  a  thing  when 
"  we  think  it  by  the  qualities  of  which  it  is  the  comple- 
"  ment.     But  as  the  attribution  of  qualities  is  an  affir- 

*  First  and  second  senses  confused  together. 
t  First  sense.  '%  First  sense.  §  Third  sense. 


/  o^t^  iJfeofcJk^  ntuA 


THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF   THE   CONDITIONED.  101 

"mation,  as  affirmation  and  negation  are  relatives,  and] 

"  as  relatives  are  known  only  in  and  through  each  other, 

"  we  cannot,  therefore,  have  a  consciousness  of  the  affir-  i 

"  mation  of  any  quality,  without  having  at  the  same  time  i 

"  the  correlative   consciousness  of  its  negation.     Now,  ( 

"  the  one  consciousness  is  a  positive,  the  other  conscious-  J 

"  ness  is  a  negative  notion.     But,  in  point  of  fact,  a 

"  negative  notion  is  only  the  negation  of  a  notion ;  we 

"  think  only  by  the  attribution  of  certain  qualities,  and 

"  the  negation  of  these  qualities  and  of  this  attribution 

"  is  simply,  in  so  far,  a  denial   of  our  thinking  at  all.  , 

"  As  affirmation  always  suggests  negation,  every  positive  1 

"notion  must  likewise  suggest  a  negative  notion :  and} 

"  as  language  is  the  reflex  of  thought,  the  positive  and 

"  negative  notions  are  expressed  by  positive  and  negative 

"  nailies.     Thus  it  is  with  the  infinite.    The  finite  is  the 

"  only  object  of  real  or  positive  thought;  it  is  that  alone 

"  which  we  think  by  the  attribution  of  determinate  cha- 

"  racters ;  the  infinite,  on  the  contrary,  is  conceived  only 

"  by  the  thinking  away  of  every  character  by  which  the 

"  finite  was  conceived:  in   other. words,  we   conceive  it     ^ 

"  only  as  inconceivable.* ^"XM^fJL 

"  It   is    manifest   that  we    can  no  more  realize  the 
"  thought  or  conception   of  infinite,  unbounded,  or  un- 
"  limited  space,  than  we  can  realize  the  conception  of 
"  a  finite  or  absolutely  bounded  space.f     But  these  two  IM^"^  ^ 
"  inconceivables  are  reciprocal  contradictories  :  we  are  . 

"  unable  to  comprehend  J  the  possibility  of  either,  while,  ivW^^.*-t^ 
"  however,  on  the  principle  of  Excluded  Middle,  one  or 
"  other  must  be  admitted 

"  It  is  needless  to  show  that  the  same  result  is  given 
"  by  the  experiment  made  on  extension  considered  as  a 
"  part,  as  divisible.  Here  if  we  attempt  to  divide  ex- 
"  tension  in  thought,  we  shall  neither,  on  the  one  hand, 
"  succeed  in  conceiving  the  possibility  §  of  an  absolute  6<4aow 
"  minimum  of  space,  that  is,  a  minimum  ex  hi/pot/iesi 

*  THrd  sense,  gliding  back  into  the  first. 

t  Here  the  return  to  the  first  sense  is  completed. 

X  Second  sense.  §  Second  sense. 


102 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    CONDITIONED. 


"  extended,  but  which  cannot  be  conceived  as  divisible 
"  into  parts,*  nor,  on  the  other,  of  carrying  on  this 
"  division  to  infinity.  But  as  these  are  contradictory 
*'  opposites,"  one  or  the  other  of  them  must  be  true. 

In  other  passages  our  author  applies  the  same  order 
of  considerations  to  Time,  saying  that  we  can  neither 
conceive  an  absolute  commencement,  nor  an  infinite 
regress;  an  absolute  termination,  nor  a  duration  infinitely 
prolonged  ;  though  either  the  one  or  the  other  must  be 
true.  And  again,  of  the  Will :  we  cannot,  he  says,  con- 
ceive the  Will  to  be  Free,  because  this  would  be  to  con- 
ceive an  event  uncaused,  or,  in  other  words,  an  absolute 
commencement :  neither  can  we  conceive  the  Will  not 
to  be  Free,  because  this  would  be  supposing  an  infinite 
regress  from  effect  to  cause.  The  will,  however,  must 
be  either  free  or  not  free ;  and  in  this  case,  he  thinks  we 
have  independent  grounds  for  deciding  one  way,  namely, 
that  it  is  free,  because  if  it  were  not,  we  could  not  be 
accountable  for  our  actions,  which  our  consciousness 
assures  us  that  we  are. 

This,  then,  is  the  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned  :  into 
the  value  of  which  it  now  remains  to  enquire. 

In  the  case  of  each  of  the  Antinomies  which  the 
author  presents,  he  undertakes  to  establish  two  things : 
that  neither  of  the  rival  hypotheses  can  be  conceived  by 
us  as  possible,  and  that  we  are  nevertheless  certain  that 
one  or  the  other  of  them  is  true. 

To  begin  with  his  first  position,  that  we  can  neither 
conceive  an  end  to  space,  nor  space  without  end. 

That  we  are  unable  to  conceive  an  end  to  space  I  fully 
acknowledge.  To  account  for  this  there  needs  no  in- 
herent incapacity.  We  are  disabled  from  forming  this 
conception,  by  known  psychological  laws.  We  have 
never  perceived  any  object,  or  any  portion  of  space, 
which  had  not  other  space  beyond  it.  And  we  have 
been  perceiving  objects  and  portions  of  space  from  the 
moment  of  birth.    How  then  could  the  idea  of  an  object, 


*  First  sense. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY    OP   THE   CONDITIONED.  103 

or  of  a  portion  of  space,  escape  becoming  inseparably 
associated  with  the   idea   of  additional  space    beyond? 
Every  instant  of  our  lives  helps  to  rivet  this  association, 
and  we  never  have  had  a  single  experience  tending  to 
disjoin  it.     The  association,  under  the  present  constitu- 
tion of  our  existence,  is  indissoluble.     But  we  have  no  [ 
ground  for  believing  that  it  is  so  from  the  original  struc-  ■ 
ture  of  our  minds.     We  can  suppose  that  in  some  other 
state  of  existence  we  might  be  transported  to  the  end 
of  space,  when,  being  apprised  of  what  had  happened  by  I 
some  impression  of  a  kind  utterly  unknown  to  us  now,  j 
we  should  at  the  same  instant  become  capable  of  con- 
ceiving the  fact,  and  learn  that  it  was  true.     After  some 
experience  of  the  new  impression,  the  fact  of  an  end  to 
space  would  seem  as  natural  to  us  as  the  revelations  of  ' 
sight  to  a  person  born  blind,  after  he    has  been  long 
enough    couched    to  have  become  familiar  with  them. 
But  as  this  cannot  happen  in  our  present  state  of  exis- 
tence, the  experience  which  would  render  the  association 
dissoluble    is   never   obtained ;    and   an   end   to   space 
remains  inconceivable. 

One  half,  then,  of  our  author's  first  proposition,  must 
be  conceded.  But  the  other  half?  Is  it  true  that  we 
are  incapable  of  conceiving  infinite  space  ?  I  have 
already  shown  strong  reasons  for  dissenting  from  this 
assertion:  and  those  which  our  author,  in  this  and  other 
places,  assigns  in  its  support,  seem  to  me  quite  untenable. 

He  says,  "  we  think,  we  conceive,  we  comprehend,  a 
"  thing,  only  as  we  think  it  as  within  or  under  something 
**  else.  But  to  do  this  of  the  infinite  is  to  think  the 
"  infinite  as  finite,  which  is  contradictory  and  absurd." 
When  we  come  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  account  of  the 
Laws  of  Thought,  we  shall  have  some  remarks  to  make 
on  the  phrase  to  think  one  thing  within  or  under 
another ;"  a  favourite  expression  with  •  the  Transcen- 
dental school,  one  of  whose  characteristics  is,  that 
they  are  always  using  the  prepositions  in  a  metaphorical 
sense.  But  granting  that  to  think  a  thing  is  to  think 
it  under  something  else,  we  must  understand  this  state- 


104  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    CONDITIONED. 

ment  as  it  is  invariably  interpreted  by  those  who  em- 
ploy it.  Accordinsf  to  them,  we  think  a  thing  when  we 
make  any  affirmation  respecting  it,  and  we  think  it 
under  the  notion  which  we  affirm  of  it.  Whenever  we 
judge,  we  think  the  subject  under  the  predicate.  Con- 
sequently when  we  say  "God  is  good,"  we  think  Grod 
under  the  notion  "good."  Is  this,  in  our  author's 
opinion,  to  think  the  infinite  as  finite,  and  hence  "  con- 
tradictory and  absurd  ?" 

If  this  doctrine  hold,  it  follows  that  we  cannot  predi- 
cate anything  of  a  subject  which  we  regard  as  being 
in  any  of  its  attributes,  infinite.  We  are  unable,  without 
falling  into  a  contradiction,  to  assert  anything  not  only 
of  God,  but  of  Time,  and  of  Space.  Considered  as  a 
reductio  ad  absurdum,  this  is  sufficient.  But  we  may  go 
deeper  into  the  matter,  and  deny  the  statement  that  to 
think  anything  "  under "  the  notion  expressed  by  a 
general  term  is  to  think  it  as  finite.  None  of  our  gene- 
ral predicates  are,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term,  finite  ; 
they  are  all,  at  least  potentially,  infinite.  "  Good  "  is 
not  a  name  for  the  things  or  persons  possessing  that 
attribute  which  exist  now,  or  at  any  other  given 
moment,  and  which  are  only  a  finite  aggregate.  It  is 
a  name  for  all  those  which  ever  did,  or  ever  will,  or  even 
in  hypothesis  or  fiction  can,  possess  the  attribute.  This 
is  not  a  limited  number  It  is  the  very  nature  and 
constituent  character  of  a  general  notion  tliat  its  ex- 
tension (as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  would  say)  is  without 
limit. 

But  he  might  perhaps  say,  that  though  its  extension, 
consisting  of  the  possible  individuals  included  in  it,  may  be 
infinite,  its  comprehension,  the  set  of  attributes  contained 
in  it  (or  as  I  prefer  to  say,, connoted  by  its  name)  is  a 
limited  quantity.  Undoubtedly  it  is.  But  see  what 
follows.  If,  because  the  comprehension  of  a  general 
notion  is  finite,  anything  infinite  cannot  without  contra- 
diction be  thought  under  it,  the  consequence  is,  that  a 
being  possessing  in  an  infinite  degree  a  given  attribute, 
cannot  be  thought  under  that  very  attribute.     Infinite 


THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF    THE    CONDITIONED.  105 

goodness  cannot  be  thought  as  goodness,  because  that 
would  be  to  think  it  as  finite.  Surely  there  must  be 
some  great  confusion  of  ideas  in  the  premises,  when  this 
comes  out  as  the  conclusion. 

Our  author  goes  on  to  repeat  the  argument  used  in 
his  reply  to  Cousin,  that  Infinite  Space  is  inconceivable, 
because  all  the  conception  we  are  able  to  form  of  it  is 
negative,  and  a  negative  conception  is  the  same  as  no 
conception.  "The  infinite  is  conceived  only  by  the 
"  thinking  away  of  every  character  by  which  the  finite 
"  was  conceived."  To  this  assertion  I  oppose  my  former 
reply.  Instead  of  thinking  away  every  character  of  the 
finite,  we  think  away  only  the  idea  of  an  end,  or  a 
boundary.  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  proposition  is  true  of 
"  The  Infinite,"  the  meaningless  abstraction  ;  but  it  is 
not  true  of  Infinite  Space,  in  trying  to  form  a  concep- 
tion of  that,  we  do  not  think  away  its  positive  characters. 
We  leave  it  to  the  character  of  Space ;  all  that  belongs 
to  it  as  space  ;  its  three  dimensions,  with  all  tlieir  geome- 
trical properties.  We  leave  to  it  also  a  character  which 
belongs  to  it  as  Infinite,  that  of  being  greater  than  any 
finite  space.  If  an  object  which  has  these  well-marked 
positive  attributes  is  unthinkable,  because  it  has  a  nega- 
tive attribute  as  well,  the  number  of  thinkable  objects 
must  be  remarkably  small.  Nearly  all  our  positive  con- 
ceptions which  are  at  all  complex,  include  negative  attri- 
butes. I  do  not  mean  merely  the  negatives  which  are 
implied  in  affirmatives,  as  in  saying  that  snow  is  white 
we  imply  that  it  is  not  black ;  but  independent  negative 
attributes  superadded  to  these,  and  which  are  so  real  that 
they  are  often  the  essential  characters,  or  difierentiae,  of 
classes.  Our  conception  of  dumb,  is  of  something  which 
cannot  speak  ;  of  the  brutes,  as  of  creatures  which  have 
not  reason;  of  the  mineral  kingdom,  as  the  part  of 
Nature  which  has  not  organization  and  life  ;  of  immortal, 
as  that  which  never  dies.  Are  all  these  examples  of  the 
Inconceivable  ?  So  false  is  it  that  to  think  of  a  thing 
under  a  negation  is  to  think  it  as  unthinkable, 
,  In  otlier  passages.  Sir  W.  Hamilton   argues  that  we 


< 


J 


^ 

jj?>-" 


> 


106  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE   CONDITIONED. 

caimot  conceive  infinite  space,  because  we  should  require 
infinite  time  to  do  it  in.  It  would  of  course  require 
infinite  time  to  carry  our  thoughts  in  succession  over 
every  part  of  infinite  space.  But  on  how  many  of  our 
finite  conceptions  do  we  think  it  necessary  to  perform 
such  an  operation  ?  Let  us  try  the  doctrine  upon  a 
complex  whole,  short  of  infinite ;  such  as  the  number 
695,788.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  would  not,  I  suppose,  have 
maintained  that  this  number  is  inconceivable.  How 
long  did  he  think  it  would  take  to  go  over  every  separate 
unit  of  this  whole,  so  as  to  obtain  a  perfect  knowledge 
of  ihat  exact  sum,  as  different  from  all  other  sums,  either 
greater  or  less  ?  Would  he  have  said  that  we  could 
have  no  conception  of  the  sura  until  this  process  had 
been  gone  through  ?  We  could  not,  indeed,  have  an 
adequate  conception.  Accordingly  we  never  have  an 
adequate  conception  of  any  real  thing.  But  we  have  a 
real  conception  of  an  object  if  we  conceive  it  by  any  of 
its  attributes  that  are  sufficient  to  distinguish  it  from  all 
other  things.  We  have  a  conception  of  any  large 
number,  when  we  have  conceived  it  by  some  one  of  its 
modes  of  composition,  such  as  that  indicated  by  the 
position  of  its  digits.  We  seldom  get  nearer  than  this 
to  an  adequate  conception  of  any  large  number.  But 
for  all  intellectual  purposes,  this  limited  conception  is 
sufficient :  for  it  not  only  enables  us  to  avoid  confounding 
the  number,  in  our  calculations,  with  any  other  numerical 
whole — even  with  those  so  nearly  equal  to  it  that  no 
difference  between  them  would  be  perceptible  by  sight 
or  touch,  unless  the  units  were  drawn  up  in  a  manner 
expressly  adapted  for  displaying  it — but  we  can  also,  by 
means  of  this  attribute  of  the  number,  ascertain  and  add 
to  our  conception  as  many  more  of  its  properties  as  we 
please.  It,  then,  we  can  obtain  a  real  conception  of  a 
finite  whole  without  going  through  all  its  component 
parts,  why  deny  us  a  real  conception  of  an  infinite  whole 
because  to  go  through  them  ail  is  impossible  ?  !Not  to 
mention  that  even  in  the  case  of  the  finite  number, 
though  the  units  composing  it  are  limited,  }et,  Number 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    CONDITIONED.  107 

being  infinite,  the  possible  modes  of  deriving  any  given 
number  from  other  numbers  are  numerically  infinite  ;  and 
as  all  these  are  necessary  parts  of  an  adequate  conception 
of  any  number,  to  render  our  conception  even  of  this 
finite  whole  perfectly  adequate  would  also  require  an 
infinite  time.* 

But  though  our  conception  of  infinite  space  can  never  ] 
be  adequate,  since  we  can  never  exhaust  its  parts,  the.  ; 
conception,  as  far  as  it  goes,  is  a  real  conception.  We  ' 
realize  in  imagination  the  various  attributes  composing 
it.  We  realize  it  as  space.  We  realize  it  as  greater 
than  any  given  space.  We  even  realize  it  as  endless,  in 
an  intelligible  manner,  that  is,  we  clearly  represent  to 
ourselves  that  however  much  of  space  has  been  already 
explored,  and  however  much  more  of  it  we  may  imagine 
ourselves  to  traverse,  we  are  no  nearer  to  the  end  of  it 
than  we  were  at  first;  since,  however  often  we  repeat 
the  process  of  imagining  distance  extending  in  any 
direction  trom  us,  that  process  is  always  susceptible  of 
being  carried  further.  This  conception  is  both  real  and  ! ) 
perfectly  definite.  A  merely  negative  notion  may  cor- 
respond to  any  number  of  the  most  heterogeneous  posi- 
tive things,  but  this  notion  corresponds  to  one  thmg 
only.  We  possess  it  as  completely  as  we  possess  any 
of  our  clearest  conceptions,  and  can  avail  ourselves  of  it 
as  well  for  ulterior  mental  operations.  As  regards  the 
Extent  of  Space,  therefore,  tSir  W.  Hamilton  has  not 
made  out  his  point :  one  of  the  two  contradictory 
hypotheses  is  not  inconceivable. 

The  same  thing  may  be  said,  equally  decidedly,  respect- 
ing the  Divisibility  of  iSpace.  According  to  our  author, 
a  minimum   of  divisibility,  and  a   divisibility  without 

*  Mr.  Mansel  replies  (p.  134)  that  our  system  of  numeration  enables  us 
to  "  exhaust  any  finite  number,  by  dealing  with  its  items  in  large  masses," 
but  that  no  such  process  can  "exhaust  the  infinite."  My  argument  is 
that  we  need  not  exhaust  the  infinite  to  be  enabled  to  conceive  it ;  since, 
in  point  of  fact,  we  do  not  exhaust  the  finite  numbers  which  it  is  admitted 
that  we  can  and  do  conceive.  Mr.  Mansel  says  we  do  ;  which  reduces  the 
question  to  a  difference  in  the  meanmg  of  the  word  exhaust.  In  the  only 
sense  that  is  of  importance  to  the  argument,  we  do  not  mentally  exhaust 
any  large  number,  since  we  do  not  acquire  an  adequate  idea  of  it. 


108  THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF    THE    CONDITIONED. 

limit,  are  both  inconceivable.  I  venture  to  think,  on 
the  contrary,  that  both  are  conceivable.  Divisibility,  of 
course,  does  not  here  mean  physical  separability  of  parts, 
but  their  mere  existence ;  and  the  question  is,  can  we 
conceive  a  portion  of  extension  so  small  as  not  to  be 
composed  of  parts,  and  can  we,  on  the  other  hand,  con- 
ceive parts  consisting  of  smaller  parts,  and  these  of  still 
smaller,  without  end  ?  As  to  the  latter,  smallness  without 
limit  is  as  positive  a  conception  as  greatness  without 
limit.  We  have  the  idea  of  a  portion  of  space,  and  to 
I  this  we  add  that  of  being  smaller  than  any  given  portion. 
The  other  side  of  the  alternative  is  still  more  evidently 
conceivable.  It  is  not  denied  that  there  is  a  portion  of 
extension  which  to  the  naked  eye  appears  an  indivisible 
point ;  it  has  been  called  by  philosophers  the  minimum 
visibile.  This  minimum  we  can  indefinitely  magnify  by 
means  of  optical  instruments,  making  visible  the  still 
smaller  parts  which  compose  it.  In  each  successive  ex- 
periment there  is  still  a  miniynum  visibile,  anything  less 
than  which,  cannot  be  discerned  with  that  instrument, 
but  can  with  one  of  a  higher  power.  Suppose,  now,  that 
as  we  increase  the  magnifying  powers  of  our  instruments, 
and  before  we  have  reached  the  limit  of  possible  increase, 
we  arrive  at  a  stage  at  which  that  which  seemed  the 
smallest  visible  space  under  a  given  microscope,  does 
not  appear  larger  under  one  which,  \)^  its  mechanical 
construction,  is  adapted  to  magnify  more — but  still  re- 
mains apparently  indivisible.  I  say,  that  if  this  happened, 
we  should  believe  in  a  minimum  of  extension ;  and  as 
we  should  be  able  to  conceive,  that  is,  to  represent  to 
ourselves  in  an  image,  anything  smaller,  any  further 
divisibility  would  be  as  inconceivable  to  us  as  it  would 
be  unbelievable. 

There  would  be  no  difficulty  in  applying  a  similar  line 
of  argument  to  the  case  of  Time,  or  to  any  other  of  the 
Antinomies,  (there  is  a  long  list  of  them,*  to  some  of 
which  1  shall  have  to  return  for  another  purpose,)  but  it 
would  needlessly  encumber  our  pages.     In  no  one  case 

*  See  the  catalogue  at  length,  in  the  Appendix  to  the  second  volume  of 
the  Lectures,  pp.  C^27-5i!9. 


THE  PHILOSOPHT    OF    THE    CONDITIONED.  109 

mentioned  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  do  I  believe  that  he  could 
substantiate  his  assertion,  that  "  the  Conditioned,"  by 
which  he  means  every  object  of  human  knowledge,  lies 
between  two  "  inconditionate  "  hypotheses,  both  of  them 
inconceivable.  Let  me  add,  that  even  granting  the  in- 
conceivability of  the  two  opposite  hypotheses,  I  cannot 
see  that  any  distinct  meaning  is  conveyed  by  the 
statement  that  the  Conditioned  is  "  the  mean  "  between 
them,  or  that  "  all  positive  thought,"  "  all  that  we  can 
positively  think,"  "  lies  between  "  these  two  "  extremes," 
these  "  two  opposite  poles  of  thought."  The  extremes 
are,  space  in  the  aggregate  considered  as  having  a 
limit,  Space  in  the  aggregate  considered  as  having  no 
limit.  Neither  of  these,  says  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  can  we 
think.  But  what  we  can  positively  think  (according  to 
him)  is  not  Space  in  the  aggregate  at  all ;  it  is  some 
limited  Space,  and  this  we  think  as  square,  as  circular,  as 
triangular,  or  as  elliptical.  Are  triangular  and  elliptical 
a  mean  between  infinite  and  finite  ?  They  are,  by  the 
very  meaning  of  the  words,  modes  of  the  finite.  So  that 
it  would  be  more  like  the  truth  to  say  that  we  think  the 
pretended  mean  under  one  of  the  extremes ;  and  if 
infinite  and  finite  are  "  two  opposite  poles  of  thought," 
then  in  this  polar  opposition,  unlike  voltaic  polarity,  all 
the  matter  is  accumulated  at  one  pole.  But  this  counter- 
statement  would  be  no  more  tenable  than  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's;  for  in  reality,  thejthought  which  he  affirms 
to  be  a  medium  between  two  extreme  statements,  has  no 
correlation  with  those  statements  at  all.  It  does  not 
relate  to  the  same  object.  Tiie  two  counter-hypotheses 
are  suppositions  respecting  Space  at  large.  Space  as  a 
collective  whole.  The  "  conditioned  "  thinking,  said  to 
Be  the  mean  between  them,  relates  to  parts  of  Space,  and 
classes  of  such  parts :  circles  and  triangles,  or  pTanetary 
and  stellar  distances.  The  alternative  of  opposite  in- 
conceivabilities never  presents  itself  in  regard  to  them ; 
they  are  all  finite,  and  are  conceived  and  known  as  such. 
"What  the  notion  of  extremes  and  a  mean  can  signify, 
when  applied  to  propositions  in  which  diff'erent  predicates 
are  affirmed  of  different  subjects,  passes  my  comprehen- 


no  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THB    CONDITIONED. 

sion :  but  it  served  to  pve  greater  apparent  profundity 
to  the  "  Fundamental  Doctrine,"  in  the  eyes  not  of  dis- 
ciples (for  Sir  W.  Hamilton  was  wholly  incapable  of 
quackery)  but  of  the  teacher  himself 

If  these  arguments  are  valid,  the  "  Law  of  the  Con» 
ditioned  "  rests  on  no  rational  foundation.  The  propo- 
sition that  the  Conditioned  lies  between  two  hypotheses 
concerning  the  Unconditioned,  neither  of  which  hypo- 
theses we  can  conceive  as  possible,  must  be  placed  in 
that  numerous  class  of  metaphysical  doctrines,  which 
have  a  magnificent  sound,  but  are  empty  of  the  smallest 
substance.* 

*  In  the  first  edition,  besides  denying  the  inconceivability  of  the  pairs 
of  contradictory  hypotheses  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Antinomies,  I  also  con- 
tested the  assertion  that  one  or  other  of  them  must  be  true  ;  arguing,  that 
the  law  of  Excluded  Middle,  though  true  of  all  phtenomena,  and  therefore 
of  Space  and  Time  in  their  phsenomenal  character,  is  not  a  law  of  Things. 
"  The  law  of  Excluded  Middle  is,  that  whatever  predicate  we  suppose, 
"  either  that  or  its  negative  must  be  true  of  any  given  subject :  and  this 
"  I  do  not  admit  when  the  subject  is  a  Noumenon ;  inasmuch  as  every 
'*  possible  predicate,  even  negative,  except  the  single  one  of  Non-entity, 
"  involves,  as  a  part  of  itself,  something  positive,  which  part  is  only  known 
"  to  us  by  phaenomenal  experience,  and  may  have  only  a  phsenomenal 
"  existence."  This,  being  an  over-statement,  and  when  reduced  to  its 
proper  bounds,  not  necessarily  conflicting  with  anything  said  by  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  on  the  present  subject,  I  abandon.  But  I  retain  a  portion  of 
my  remarks,  illustrative  of  the  abusive  application  of  which  the  Principle 
of  Excluded  Middle  is  susceptible.  "  The  universe,  for  example,  must,  it 
"  is  affirmed,  be  either  infinite  or  finite  :  but  what  do  these  words  mean  ? 
"  That  it  must  be  either  of  infinite  or  finite  magnitude.  Magnitudes 
"  certainly  must  be  either  infinite  or  finite,  but  before  afiirming  the  same 
"  thing  of  the  Noumenon  Universe,  it  has  to  be  established  that  the 
"  universe  as  it  is  in  itself  is  capable  of  the  attribute  magnitude.  How  do 
"  we  know  that  magnitude  is  not  exclusively  a  property  of  our  sensations — 
"  of  the  states  of  subjective  consciousness  which  objects  produce  in  us  ? 
"  Or  if  this  supposition  displeases,  how  do  we  know  that  magnitude  is 
"  not,  as  Kant  considered  it  to  be,  a  form  of  our  minds,  an  attribute  with 
"  which  the  laws  of  thought  invest  every  conception  that  we  can  form, 
"  but  to  which  there  may  be  nothing  analogous  in  the  Noumenon,  the 
"  Thing  in  itself?  The  like  may  be  said  of  Duration,  whether  infinite  or 
"  finite,  and  of  Divisibility,  whether  stopping  at  a  minimum  or  prolonged 
"  without  limit.  Either  the  one  proposition  or  the  other  must  of  course 
"  be  true  of  duration  and  of  matter  as  they  are  perceived  by  us — as  they 
*'  present  themselves  to  our  faculties ;  bat  duration  itself  is  held  by  Kant 
"  to  have  no  real  existence  out  of  our  minds ;  and  as  for  matter,  not 
"  knowing  what  it  is  in  itself,  we  know  not  whether,  as  affirmed  of  matter 
"  in  itself,  the  word  divisible  has  any  meaning.  Believing  divisibility  to 
"  be  an  acquired  notion,  made  up  of  the  elements  of  our  sensational  ex- 
"  perience,  I  do  not  admit  that  the  Noumenon  Matter  must  be  either 
"  infinitely  or  finitely  divisible." 


Ill 


CHAPTER  VTI. 


THE     PHILOSOPHY     OP     THE     CONDITIONED     AS    APPLIED     BY 
MR.    MANSEL    TO    THE   LIMITS    OF   RELIGIOUS    THOUGHT. 

Mr.  Mansel  may  be  affirmed,  by  a  fair  applicatiou  of 
the  term,  to  be,  in  metaphysics,  a  pupil  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton.  I  do  not  mean  that  he  agrees  with  him  in  all 
his  opinions  ;  for  he  avowedly  dissents  from  the  peculiar 
Hamiltonian  theory  of  Cause  :  still  less  that  he  has 
learnt  nothing  from  any  other  teacher,  or  from  his  own 
independent  speculations.  On  the  contrary,  he  has 
shown  considerable  power  of  original  thought,  both  of  a 
good  and  of  what  seems  to  me  not  a  good  quality.  But  he 
is  the  admiring  editor  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Lectures ; 
he  invariably  speaks  of  him  with  a  deference  which  he 
pays  to  no  other  philosopher ;  he  expressly  accepts,  in 
language  identical  with  Sir  W,  Hamilton's  own,  the 
doctrines  regarded  as  specially  characteristic  of  the 
Hamiltonian  philosophy,  and  may  with  reason  be  con- 
sidered as  a  representative  of  the  same  general  mode  of 
thought.  Mr.  Mansel  has  bestowed  especial  cultivation 
upon  a  province  but  slightly  touched  by  his  master — 
the  application  of  the  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned  to 
the  theological  department  of  thought ;  the  deduction  of 
such  of  its  corollaries  and  consequences  as  directly  con- 
cern religion. 

The  premises  from  which  Mr.  Mansel  reasons  are 
those  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton.  He  maintains  the  necessary 
relativity  of  all  our  knowledge.  He  holds  that  the  Ab- 
solute and  the  Infinite,  or,  to  use  a  more  significant 
expression,  an  Absolute  and  an  Infinite  Being,  are  incon- 
ceivable by  us ;  and  that  when  we  strive  to  conceive  what 


112  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    CONDITIONED. 

is  thus  inaccessible  to  our  faculties,  we  fall  into  self-con- 
tradiction.    That   we    are,    nevertheless,    warranted   in 
believing,  and  bound  to  believe,  the  real  existence  of  an 
absolute  and  infinite  being,  and  that  this  being  is  God. 
God,  therefore,  is  inconceivable  and  unknowable  by  us, 
and  cannot  even  be  thought  of  without    self-contradic- 
tion ;  tliat  is  (for  Mr.  Mausel  is  careful  thus  to  qualify 
the  assertion),  thought  of  as  Absolute,  and  as  Infinite. 
Through  this   inherent  impossibility  of  our  conceiving 
or  knowing  God's  essential  attributes,  we  are  disqualified 
from  judging  what  is  or  is  not  consistent  with  them. 
If,  then,  a  religion  is   presented  to  us,  containing  any 
particular  doctrine  respecting  the  Deity,  our  belief  or  re- 
jection of  the  doctrine  ought  to  depend  exclusively  upon 
the  evidences  which  can  be  produced  for  the  divine  origin 
of  the  religion ;  and  no  argument  grounded  on  the  in- 
credibility of  the  doctrine,  as  involving  an  intellectual 
absurdity,  or  on  its  moral  badness  as  unworthy  of  a  good 
or  wise  being,  ought  to  have  any  weight,  since  of  these 
things  we  are  incompetent  to  judge.     This,  at  least,  is 
the  drift  of  Mr.  Mansel's  argument ;  but  I  am  bound  to 
admit  that  he  affirms  the  conclusion  with  a  certain  limi- 
tation ;  for  he  acknowledges,  that  the  moral  character  of 
the  doctrines  of  a  religion  ought  to  count  for  something 
>  among  the  reasons  for  accepting  or  rejecting,  as  of  divine 
origin,  the  religion  as  a  whole.     That  it  ought  ^also  to 
count  for  something  in  the  interpretation  of  the  religion 
when  accepted,  he  neglects  to  say ;  but  we  must  in  fair- 
ness suppose  that  he  would  admit  it.     These  concessions, 
however,  to  the  moral  feelings  of  mankind,  are  made  at 
the   expense  of  Mr.  Mansel's  logic.     If  his  theory  is 
correct,  he  has  no  right  to  make  either  of  them. 

There  is  nothing  new  in  this  line  of  argument  as  ap- 
})Ued  to  theology.  That  we  cannot  understand  God ; 
that  his  ways  are  not  our  ways ;  that  we  cannot  scruti- 
nize or  judge  his  counsels — propositions  which,  in  a  rea- 
sonable sense  of  the  terms,  could  not  be  denied  by  any 
Theist — have  often  before  been  tendered  as  reasons  why 
we  may  assert  any  absurdities  and  any  moral  monstrosi- 


AS    APPLIED    BY    MR.   MANSEL   TO    RELIGION.  113 

ties  concerning  God,  and  miscall  them  Goodness  and 
Wisdom.  The  novelty  is  in  presenting  this  conclusion 
as  a  corollary  from  the  most  advanced  doctrines  of  modern 
philosophy — from  the  true  theory  of  the  powers  and 
limitations  of  the  human  mind,  on  religious  and  on  all 
other  subjects. 

My  opinion  of  this  doctrine,  in  whatever  way  pre- 
sented, is,  that  it  is  simply  tlie  most  morally  pernicious 
doctrine  now  current ;  and  that  4;he  question,  it  involves 
is,  beyond  all  others  which  now  engage  speculative 
minds,  the  decisive  one  between  moral  good  and  evil  for 
the  Christian  world.  It  is  a  momentous  matter,  there- 
fore, to  consider  whether  we  are  obliged  to  adopt  it. 
Without  holding  Mr.  Mansel  accountable  for  the  moral 
consequences  of  the  doctrine,  further  than  he  himself  ac- 
cepts them,  I  think  it  supremely  important  to  examine 
whether  the  doctrine  itself  is  really  the  verdict  of  a  sound 
metaphysic ;  and  essential  to  a  true  estimation  of  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  philosophy  to  enquire,  whether  the  con- 
clusion thus  drawn  from  his  principal  doctrine,  is  justly 
affiliated  on  it.  I  think  it  will  appear  that  the  con- 
clusion not  only  does  not  follow  from  a  true  theory  of  the 
human  faculties,  but  is  not  even  correctly  drawn  from' 
the  premises  from  which  Mr.  Mansel  infers  it. 

We  must  have  the  premises  distinctly  before  us  as 
conceived  by  Mr.  Mansel,  since  we  have  hitherto  seen 
them  only  as  taught  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton.  Clearness  and 
explicitness  of  statement  being  in  the  number  of  Mr. 
MansePs  merits,  it  is  easier  to  perceive  the  flaws  in  his 
arguments  than  in  those  of  bis  master,  because  he  often 
leaves  us  less  in  doubt  what  he  means  by  his  words. 

To  have  "  such  a  knowledge  of  the  Divine  Nature" 
as  would  enable  human  reason  to  judge  of  theology,  would 
be,  according  to  Mr.  Mansel,*  "  to  conceive  the  Deity  as 
he  is."  This  would  be  to  "conceive  him  as  First 
Cause,  as  Absolute,  and  as  Infinite."  The  First  Cause 
Mr.  Mansel  defines  in  the  usual  manner.  About  the 
meaning  of  Infinite  there  is  no  difficulty.     But  when 

*  Limits  of  Religious  Thought,  4th  edition,  pp.  29,  30. 
I 


114  THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF    THE    CONDITIONED 

we  come  to  the  Absolute  we  are  on  more  slippery 
ground.  Mr.  Mansel,  however,  tells  us  his  meaning 
plainly.  By  the  Absolute,  he  does  not  mean  what  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  professes  always  to  mean  by  it,  something 
which  includes  the  idea  of  completed  or  finished.  He 
adopts  the  other  meaning,  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  men- 
tions, but  disclaims — the  opposite  of  Eelative.  "  By 
"  the  Absolute  is  meant  that  which  exists  in  and  by  itself, 
"  having  no  necessary  relation  to  any  other  Being." 

This  explanation  by  Mr.  Mansel  of  Absolute  in  the 
sense  in  which  it  is  opposed  to  Eelative,  is  more  definite 
in  its  terms  than  that  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  gives 
when  attempting  the  same  thing.  For  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
recognises  (as  already  remarked)  this  second  meaning  of 
Absolute,  and  this  is  the  account  he  gives  of  it  :* 
"  Ahsolutum  means  what  is  freed  or  loosed  ;  in  which 
"  sense  the  Absolute  will  be  what  is  aloof  from  relation, 
"  comparison,  limitation,  condition,  dependence,  &c., 
"  and  thus  is  tantamount  to  to  aTroXwroi^  of  the  lower 
"  Greeks."  May  it  not  be  surmised  that  the  vagueness 
in  which  the  master  here  leaves  the  conception,  was  for 
the  purpose  of  avoiding  difficulties  upon  which  the  pupil, 
in  his  desire  of  greater  precision,  has  unwarily  run  ?  Mr. 
Mansel  certainly  gains  nothing  by  the  more  definite 
character  of  his  language.  The  words,  "  having  no 
necessary  relation  to  any  other  Being,"  admit  of  two 
constructions.  The  words,  in  their  natural  sense,  only 
mean,  capable  of  exidwg  out  of  relation  to  anything  else. 
The  argument  requires  that  they  should  mean,  incapable 
of  existing  in  relation  with  anything  else.  Mr.  Mansel 
cannot  intend  the  latter.  He  cannot  mean  that  the 
Absolute  is  incapable  of  entering  into  relation  with  any 
other  being ;  for  he  would  not  affirm  this  of  Grod ;  on 
the  contrary,  he  is  continually  speaking  of  God's  rela- 
tions to  the  world  and  to  us.  Moreover,  he  accepts, 
from  Dr.  Calderwood,  an  interpretation  inconsistent 
with  this.f  This,  however,  is  the  meaning  necessary 
to  support  his  case.     For  what  is  his  first  argument  ? 

*  Discussions,  p.  14,  note.       f  Limits  of  Eeligious  Thought,  p.  200. 


AS    APPLIED    BY    MR.   MANSEL   TO   RELIGION.  115 

That  God  cannot  be  known  by  us  as  Cause,  as  Abso- 
lute, and  as  Infinite,  because  these  attributes  are,  to  our 
conception,  incompatible  with  one  another.  And  why 
incompatible  ?  Because*  "  a  Cause  cannot,  as  such,  be 
"  absolute ;  the  Absolute  cannot,  as  such,  be  a  cause. 
"  The  cause,  as  such,  exists  only  in  relation  to  its  effect : 
"the  cause  is  a  cause  of  the  effect ;  the  effect  is  an  effect 
*'  of  the  cause.  On  the  other  hand,  the  conception  of 
"  the  Absolute  involves  a  possible  existence  out  of  all 
"relation."  But  in  what  manner  is  a  possible  existence 
out  of  all  relation,  incompatible  with  the  notion  of  a  cause? 
Have  not  causes  a  possible  existence  apart  from  their 
effects  ?  Would  the  sun  (for  example)  not  exist  if  there 
were  no  earth  or  planets  for  it  to  illuminate  ?  Mr.  Mansel 
seems  to  think  that  what  is  capable  of  existing  out  of 
relation,  cannot  possibly  be  conceived  or  known  in  rela- 
tion. But  this  is  not  so.  Anything  which  is  capable 
of  existing  in  relation,  is  capable  of  being  conceived  or 
known  in  relation.  If  the  Absolute  Being  cannot  be 
conceived  as  Cause,  it  must  be  that  he  cannot  exist  as 
Cause  ;  he  must  be  incapable  of  causing.  If  he  can  be 
in  any  relation  whatever  to  any  finite  thing,  he  is  con- 
ceivable and  knowable  in  that  relation,  if  no  otherwise. 
Freed  from  this  confusion  of  ideas,  Mr.  Mansel's  argu- 
ment resolves  itself  into  this — the  same  Being  cannot 
be  thought  by  us  both  as  Cause  and  as  Absolute, 
because  a  Cause  as  such  is  not  Absolute,  and  Absolute 
as  such  is  not  a  Cause ;  which  is  exactly  as  if  he  had 
said  that  Newton  cannot  be  thought  by  us  both  as  an 
Englishman  and  as  a  mathematician,  because  an  English- 
man, as  such,  is  not  a  mathematician,  nor  a  mathema- 
tician, as  such,  an  Englishman.! 

*  Limits  of  Religioua  Thought,  p.  31. 
t  Mr.  Mausel,  in  his  reply  (p.  151)  accuses  me  of  mutilating  his  argu- 
ment. I  therefore  add  the  remainder  of  it.  "  We  attempt  to  escape  from 
"  this  apparent  contradiction  by  introducing  the  idea  of  succession  in 
"  time.  The  Absolute  exists  first  by  itself,  and  afterwards  becomes  a 
*'  Cause.  But  here  we  are  checked  by  the  third  conception,  that  of  the 
"  Infinite.  How  can  the  Infinite  become  that  which  it  was  not  from  the 
"  first  ?     If  Causation  is  a  possible  mode  of  existence,  that  which  exists 

I  2 


fc 


116  THE  PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE   CONDITIONED 

Again,  Mr,  Mansel  argues,*  that,  "  supposing  the  Ab- 
sohite  to  become  a  cause,"  since  eao  vi  termini  it  is  not 
necessitated  to  do  so,  it  must  be  a  voluntary  agent,  and 
therefore  conscious ;  for  "  volition  is  only  possible  in  a 
conscious  being."  But  consciousness,  again,  is  only 
conceivable  as  a  relation;  and  any  relation  conflicts  with 
the  notion  of  the  Absolute,  since  I'elatives  are  mutually 
dependent  on  one  another.  Here  it  comes  out  distinctly 
as  a  premise  in  the  reasoning,  that  to  be  in  a  relation  at 
all,  even  if  only  a  relation  to  itself,  the  relation  of  being 
"  conscious  of  itself,"  is  inconsistent  with  being  the 
Absolute.f 

Mr.  Mansel,  therefore,  must  alter  his  definition  of  the 
Absolute  if  he  would  maintain  his  argument.     He  must 

"  wittout  causing  is  not  infinite  ;  that  whicli  becomes  a  cause  has  passed 
"  beyond  its  former  limits."     (Limits  of  Eeligious  Thought,  pp.  31,  32.) 

This  alleged  inconsistency  of  thought  in  supposing  the  Infinite  to 
become  a  cause,  because  to  do  so  would  be  to  become  something  which  it 
was  not  from  the  first,  applies,  like  nearly  all  the  rest  of  Mr.  Mansel's 
argumentation,  only  to  the  self-contradictory  fiction,  "  The  Infinite," 
which  is  supposed  either  infinite  without  reference  to  any  attributes,  or 
infinite  in  all  possible  attributes.  Substitute  for  this  the  notion  of  a 
Being  infinite  in  given  attributes,  and  the  incompatibility  disappears. 
Surely  the  most  familiar  form  of  the  notion  of  an  infinite  being,  is  that 
of  a  Being  infinite  in  power.  Power  is  not  only  compatible  with,  but 
actually  means,  capability  of  causing.  Can  we  be  told  that  a  Being 
infinite  in  its  capability  of  causing,  cannot  to  our  conceptions,  consis- 
tently with  its  infinity,  actually  cause  anything,  but  the  power,  because 
infinite,  must  remain  dormant  through  eternity  ?  or,  as  the  opposite 
alternative,  that  this  Being  must  be  conceived  as  having  exercised  from 
all  eternity  the  whole  of  its  infinite  power  of  causing,  because  any  later 
exercise  of  that  power  would  be  fassing  into  causation  ?  Either  hypo- 
thesis Mr.  Mansel  affirms  (Limits  of  Religious  Thought,  p.  204)  to  be 
inconceivable  of  an  Infinite  Being.  But  if  an  Infinite  Being  means  a 
Being  of  infinite  wisdom  and  goodness  as  well  as  power,  the  conception  of 
that  infinite  power  as  only  partly  exercised  is  so  far  from  being  a  contra- 
diction, that  it  is  not  even  a  paradox. 

*  Limits  of  Eeligious  Thought,  p.  32. 

t  How  does  Mr.  Mansel  reconcile  this  argument  with  the  definition  of 
the  Absolute  which  he  himself  accepts  from  Dr.  Calderwood  (Limits  of 
Religious  Thought,  p.  200)  ?     "  The  Absolute  is  that  which  is  free  from 
"  all  nefjessary  relation,  that  is,  which  is  free  from  every  relation  as  a  conVi 
"  dition  of  existence ;  but  it  may  exist  in  relation,  provided  that  rela-\] 
"  tion  be  not  a  necessary  condition  of  its  existence,  that  is,  provided  thejl 
"^^  relation  maybe  removed  without  afiecting  its  existence."     A  betteiy 
definition  of  an  Absolute  Being  could  scarcely  be  devised ;  and  that  Mr. 
Mansel  should  borrow  it,  and  then  deny  the  latter  half  of  it,  proves  him 
to  be  greatly  inferior  to  Dr.  Calderwood  in  the  important  accomplishment 
of  understanding  his  own  meaning.    For  before  it  can  be  maintained  that 


AS    APPLIED   BY    MR.    MANSEL   TO    RELIGION.  117 

either  fall  back  on  the  happy  ambio^uity  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  definition,  "  what  is  aloof  from  relation," 
which  does  not  decide  whether  the  meaning  is  merely 
that  it  can  exist  out  of  relation,  or  that  it  is  incapable 
of  existing  in  it ;  or  he  must  take  courage,  and  affirm 
that  an  Absolute  Being  is  incapable  of  all  relation. 
But  as  he  will  certainly  refuse  to  predicate  this  of  God, 
the  consequence  follows,  that  God  is  not  an  Absolute 
Being. 

The  whole  of  Mr.  Mansel's  arguments  for  the  incon- 
ceivability of  the  Infinite  and  of  the  Absolute  is  one 
long  ignoratio  elenchi.  It  has  been  pointed  out  in  a 
former  chapter  that  the  words  Absolute  and  Infinite 
have  no  real  meaning,  unless  we  understand  by  them 
that  which  is  absolute  or  infinite  in  some  given  attri- 
bute ;  as  space  is  called  infinite,  meaning  that  it  is  infi- 
nite in  extension ;  and  as  God  is  termed  infinite  in  the 
sense  of  possessing  infinite  power,  and  absolute  in  the 
sense  of  absolute  goodness,  or  knowledge.  It  has  also 
been  shown  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  arguments  for  the 
unknowableness  of  the  Unconditioned,  do  not  prove  that 
we  cannot  know  an  object  which  is  absolute  or  infinite 
in  some  specific  attribute,  but  only  that  we  cannot  know 
an  abstraction  called  "The  Absolute"  or  "The  Infinite," 
which  is  supposed  to  have  all  attributes  at  once.  The 
same  remark  is  applicable  to  Mr.  Mansel,*  with  only  this 

to  be  a  conscious  being  contradicts  the  notion  of  the  Absolute,  because 
consciousness  is  a  relation,  the  power  just  admitted  in  the  Absolute  of 
existing  in  relation  provided  it  is  not  bound  to  any  relation,  must  be  either 
denied  or  forgotten. 

|_Mr.  Mansel,  in  his  rejoinder,  says  that  he  did  not  mean  to  admit  the 
second  half  of  Dr.  Calderwood's  definition  ;  and  he  holds  to  the  doctrine 
"  rhe  absolute,  as  such,  must  be  out  of  all  relation  "  (not  merely  capable 
of  existing  out  of  relation)  "  and  consequently  cannot  be  conceived  in  the 
relation  of  plurality."     (Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned,  p.  117).] 

*  Mr.  Mansel  (pp.  153,  104)  protests  against  this  passage,  as  attribu- 
ting to  him  the  use  of  the  word  "  Absolute"  in  the  sense  attached  to  it 
Ijy  rfir  W.  Hamilton,  which  includes  perfection,  though  he  had  expressly 
stated  that  he  used  the  term  in  a  different  sense.  "  When  Mr.  Mill 
•'  charges  Mr.  Mansel  with  undertaking  to  prove  the  impossibility  of  con- 
"  ceiving  a  Being  absolutely  just  or  absolutely  wise  (i.e.  as  he  supposes, 
"  perfectly  just  or  wise)  he  actually  forgets  that  he  has  just  been  criti- 
"  cisiug  Mr.  Mansei's  definition  oi  the  Absolute,  as  something  having  a' 
"  possible  existence  out  of  relation."     And  he  asks  what  I  can  •  mean  by 


118  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF   THE    CONDITIONED 

difference,  that  he,  with  the  laudable  ambition  I  have 
already  noticed  of  stating  everything  explicitly,  draws 
this  important  distinction  himself,  and  says,  of  his  own 
motion,  that  the  Absolute  he  means  is  the  abstrac- 
tion. He  says,*  that  the  Absolute  and  Infinite  can  be 
"  nothing  less  than  the  sum  of  all  reality,"  the  complex 
of  all  positive  predicates,  even  those  which  are  exclusive 
of  one  another ;  and  expressly  identifies  it  with  Hegel's 
Absolute  Being,  which  contains  in  itself  •"  all  that  is 
"  actual,  even  evil  included."  "That  which  is  conceived 
"  as  absolute  and  infinite,"  says  Mr.  Mansel,t  "  must  be 
"  conceived  as  containing  within  itself  the  sum  not  only 
"  of  all  actual,  but  of  all  possible  modes  of  being."  One 
may  well  agree  with  Mr.  Mansel  that  this  farrago  of 

goodness  or  knowledge  "  out  of  all  relation."  If  I  have,  in  this  passage, 
exchanged  Mr.  Hansel's  definition  of  the  Absolute  for  SirW.  Hamilton's, 
by  including  in  it  the  notion  of  "  finished,  perfected,  completed,"  Mr. 
Mansel  had  set  me  the  example.  As  long  as  he  kept  to  his  own  definition, 
1  did  the  same  :  I  only  followed  him  when  he  himself  imported  the  idea 
of  perfection  from  the  other  meaning  of  the  term,  and  reasoned  from  it  as 
one  of  the  characteristics  of  the  Absolute.  Does  the  reader  doubt  this  ? 
He  shall  see.  We  cannot,  says  Mr.  Mansel,  reconcile  the  idea  of  the 
Absolute  with  that  of  a  Cause,  because  "  if  the  condition  of  causal  ac- 
'•  tivity  is  a  higher  state  than  that  of  quiescence,  the  Absolute,  whether 
"  acting  voluntarily  or  involuntarily,  has  passed  from  a  condition  of  com- 
"  parative  imperfection  to  one  of  comparative  perfection,  and  therefore 
"  was  not  originally  j^er/ec^.  If  the  state  of  activity  is  an  inferior  state 
"  to  that  of  quiescence,  the  Absolute,  in  becoming  a  cause,  has  lost  its 
"  original  perfection.'"  (Limits  of  Religious  Thought,  pp.  34,  'do.  The 
italics  are  my  own.)  Again  (p.  3S)  "  While  it  is  impossible  to  represent 
"  in  thought  any  object  except  as  finite,  it  is  equally  impossible  to  repre- 
"  sent  any  finite  object,  or  any  aggregate  of  finite  objects,  as  exhausting 
"  the  universe  of  being.  Thus  the  hypothesis  which  would  annihilate  the 
"  Infinite  is  itself  shattered  to  pieces  against  the  rock  of  the  Absolute." 
In  spite,  therefore,  of  his  own  definition,  Mr.  Mansel  thinks  it  part  of  the 
notion  of  the  Absolute  that  it  is  the  Perfect,  and  that  it  exhausts  the  uni- 
verse of  bemg,  i.e.,  is  the  completed  whole  of  existence. 

It  thus  appears  that  it'  I  am  chargeable  with  anything,  it  is  with 
having  negiected  to  point  out  one  confusion  of  ideas  the  more  in  Mr. 
Mansel,  and,  this  time,  a  confusion  between  two  ideas  which  he  had  ex- 
pressly discriminated.  But  even  I  had  really  committed  the  blunder  he 
imputes  to  me,  it  would  not  have  affected  the  question  between  us  :  for  he 
always  (and,  as  I  think,  rightly)  assumes  that  the  Being  whose  conceiva- 
bility  by  us  is  the  subject  of  discussion,  has  to  be  conceived  both  as  abso- 
lute and  as  infinite  (the  Infinito-Absolute  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton);  and  if  he 
had  escaped  untouched  trom  my  criticism  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  in  respect 
of  the  Absolute,  he  would  still  have  been  inextricably  involved  in  it  as 
regards  the  Infinite. 

*  Limits  of  Religious  Thought,  p.  30.  f  Ibid.  p.  31. 


AS   APPLIED    BY    MR.    MANSEL    TO    RELIGION.  119 

contradictory  attributes  cannot  be  conceived :  but  what 
shall  we  say  of  his  equally  positive  averment  that  it 
must  be  believed  ?  If  this  be  what  the  Absolute  is, 
what  does  he  mean  by  saying  that  we  must  believe  God 
to  be  the  Absolute  ? 

The  remainder  of  Mr.  Mansell's  argumentation  is 
suitable  to  this  commencement.  The  Absolute,  as  con- 
ceived, that  is,  as  he  defines  it,  cannot  be  "  a  whole*  com- 
"  posed  of  parts,"  or  "  a  substance  consisting  of  attri- 
"  butes,"  or  a  "  conscious  subject  in  antithesis  to  an 
"  object.  For  if  there  is  in  the  absolute  any  principle  of 
"  unity,  distinct  from  the  mere  accumulation  of  parts  or 
"  attributes,  this  principle  alone  is  the  true  absolute.  If, 
**  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  such  principle,  then 
"  there  is  no  absolute  at  all,  but  only  a  plurality  of  rela- 
"  tiv^es.  The  almost  unanimous  voice  of  philosophy,  in 
**  pronouncing  that  the  absolute  is  both  one  and  simple, 
"  must  be  accepted  as  a  voice  of  reason  also,  so  far  as 
"  reason  has  any  voice  in  the  matter.  But  this  absolute 
**  unity,  as  indifferent  and  containing  no  attributes, 
"  can  neither  be  distinguished  from  the  multiplicity 
"  of  finite  beings  by  any  characteristic  feature,  nor  be 
'*  identified  with  them  in  their  multiplicity."  It  will 
be  noticed  that  the  Absolute,  which  was  just  before 
defined  as  having  all  attributes,  is  liere  declared  to  have 
none :  but  this,  Mr.  Mansel  would  say,  is  merely  one 
of  the  contradictions  inherent  in  the  attempt  to  con- 
ceive what  is  inconceivable.  "  Thus  we  are  landed  in 
"  an  inextricable  dilemma.  The  Absolute  cannot  be 
"  conceived  as  conscious,  neither  can  it  be  conceived  as 
"  unconscious  :  it  cannot  be  conceived  as  complex,  neither 
"can  it  be  conceived  as  simple:  it  cannot  be  conceived 
"  b}'  difterence,  neither  can  it  be  conceived  by  the  ab- 
"  sence  of  difference  :  it  cannot  be  identified  with  the 
"  universe,  neither  can  it  be  distinguished  from  it."  Is 
this  chimerical  abstraction  the  Absolute  Being  whom 
anybody  need  be  concerned  about,  either  as  knowable  or 
as  unknowable  ?     Is  the  inconceivableness  of  this  impos- 

*  Limits  of  Religious  Thought,  p.  33. 


120      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  CONDITIONED 

sible  fiction  any  argument  against  tLe  possibility  of 
conceiving  God,  who  is  neither  supposed  to  have  no 
attributes  nor  to  have  all  attributes,  but  to  have  good 
attributes?  Is  it  any  hindrance  to  our  being  able  to 
conceive  a  Being  absolutely  just,  for  example,  or  abso- 
lutely wise  ?  Yet  it  is  of  this  that  Mr.  Mansel  undertook 
to  prove  the  impossibility. 

Again,  of  tlie  Infinite  :  according  to  Mr.  Mansel,* 
being  "  that  than  which  a  greater  is  inconceivable, '^  it 
''consequently  can  receive  no  additional  attribute  or 
"  mode  of  existence  which  it  had  not  from  all  eternity." 
It  must  therefore  be  the  same  complex  of  all  possible 
predicates  which  the  Absolute  is,  and  all  of  them  infinite 
in  degree.  It  "  cannot  be  regarded  as  consisting  of  a 
"limited  number  of  attributes,  each  unlimited  in  its 
"  kind.  It  cannot  be  conceived,  for  example,  after  the 
"analogy  of  a  line,  infinite  in  length,  but  not  in 
"  breadth ;  or  of  a  surface,  infinite  in  two  dimensions  of 
"  space,  but  bounded  in  the  third ;  or  of  an  intelligent 
"  being,  possessing  some  one  or  more  modes  of  conscious- 
"  ness  in  an  infinite  degree,  but  devoid  of  others."  This 
Infinite,  which  is  infinite  in  all  attributes,  and  not  solely 
in  those  which  it  would  be  thought  decent  to  predicate 
of  God,  cannot,  as  Mr.  Mansel  very  truly  says,  be 
conceived.  Forf  "the  Infinite,  if  it  is  to  be  conceived 
"  at  all,  must  be  conceived  as  potentially  everything  and 
"  actually  nothing ;  for  if  there  is  anything  general  which 
"  it  cannot  become,  it  is  thereb}'^  limited ;  and  if  there  is 
"  anything  in  particular  which  it  actually  is,  it  is  thereby 
"  excluded  from  being  any  other  thing.  But  again, 
"it  must  also  be  conceived  as  actually  everythiuii^  and 
"potentially  nothing;  for  an  unrealized  potentiality  is 
"  likewise  a  limitation.  If  the  infinite  can  be  that  which 
"  it  is  not,  it  is  by  that  very  possibilit}^  marked  out  as 
"  incomplete,  and  capable  of  a  higher  perfection.  If  it 
"  is  actually  everything,  it  possesses  no  characteristic 
"  feature  by  which  it  can  be  distinguished  from  anything 
*'  else,  and  discerned  as  an  object  ol  consciousness."    Here 

*  Limits  of  Religious  Thought,  p.  30.  f  Ibid.  p.  48. 


AS   APPLIED    BY    MR.    MANSEL  TO    RELIGION.  121 

certainly  is  an  Infinite  whose  infinity  does  not  seem  to 
be  of  much  use  to  it.  But  can  a  writer  be  serious  who 
bids  us  conjure  up  a  conception  of  something  which 
possesses  infinitely  all  conflicting  attributes,  and  because 
we  cannot  do  this  without  contradiction,  would  have  us 
believe  that  there  is  a  contradiction  in  the  idea  of  infinite 
goodness,  or  infinite  wisdom  ?  Instead  of  "  the  Infinite," 
substitute  ''  an  infinitely  good  Being,"  and  Mr.  Hansel's 
artjument  reads  thus  :  If  there  is  anything  which  an 
infinitely  good  Being  cannot  become — if  he  cannot  be- 
come bad — that  is  a  limitation,  and  the  goodness  cannot 
be  infinite.  If  there  is  anything  which  an  infinitely 
good  Being  actually  is  (namely  good),  he  is  excluded 
from  being  any  other  thing,  as  from  being  wise  or 
powerful.  I  hardly  think  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  would 
patronize  this  logic,  learnt  though  it  be  in  his  school.* 

It  cannot  be  necessary  to  follow  up  Mr.  Mansel's 
metaphysical  dissertation  any  farther.  It  is  all,  as  I  have 
said,  the  same  ignoratio  elencki.  I  have  been  able  to  find 
only  one  short  passage  in  which  he  attempts  to  show 
that  we  are  unable  to  represent  in  thought  a  particular 
attribute  carried  to  the  infinite.    For  the  sake  of  fairness, 

*  By  the  time  Mr.  Mansel  gets  to  this  place,  he  grows  tired  of  giving 
relevant  answers,  and  thinks  that  any  verbal  repartee  will  suffice.  To  the 
first  half  of  my  statement,  his  answer  is  this  ^p.  158) :  "  Is  becoming  bad 
a  higher  perfection  ?"  I  reply,  that  Mr.  Mansel  seems  to  think  so ; 
inasmuch  as  he  says  "  If  the  infinite  can  be  that  which  it  is  not,  it  is  by 
"  that  very  possibility  marked  out  as  incomplete,  and  capable  of  a  higher 
"  perfection."  If  the  infinite  is  God,  and,  as  such,  good,  to  become  bad 
■would  be  to  become  what  it  is  not,  and  consequently,  according  to  Mr. 
Mansel,  to  attain  a  higher  perfection.  To  the  second  half  he  repUes  by 
identifying  the  manner  in  which  the  Infinite,  by  being  anything  in  par- 
ticular, is  excluded  from  being  any  other  thing,  with  the  manner  in  which 
a  thing,  by  being  a  horse,  is  excluded  from  being  a  dog.  Let  me  remind 
him  that  a  horse  and  a  dog  are  substances,  and  that  we  are  talking  about 
attributes.  A  substance  cannot  become  another  substance,  but  it  may 
put  on  any  number  of  additional  attributes.  Does  not  the  whole  of  the 
discussion  turn  upon  attributes  ?  Does  the  question,  what  the  Infinite 
can  or  cannot  be  or  become,  mean  anything  but  what  attributes  it  can 
have  or  acquire  ?  As  a  Substance  the  Infinite  is  the  Infinite,  and  cannot 
become  anything  else.  Does  it  follow  from  this  that  by  possessing  one 
attribute,  it  is  excluded  from  possessing  any  other  ?  Or  is  it  possible  that 
Mr.  Mansel  means,  that  the  "  Infinite,  if  it  is  to  be  conceived  at  all,"  must 
be  conceived  as  capable  of  changing  its  substance,  and  becoming  a  finite 
dog,  thereby  excluding  itself  from  being  a  horse  ?  That  would  indeed  be 
a  stretch  beyond  anything  I  have  charged  him  with. 


122  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE  CONDITIONED 

I  cite  it  in  a  note.*  All  the  argument  that  I  can  dis- 
cover in  it,  I  conceive  that  I  have  already  answered, 
as  stated  much  better  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton. 

Mr.  Mansel  thinks  it  necessary  to  declare  f  that  the 
contradictions  are  not  in  "the  nature  of  the  Absolute" 
or  Infinite  "  in  itself,  but  only"  in  "  our  own  conception 
of  that  nature."  He  did  not  mean  to  say  that  the 
Divine  Nature  is  itself  contradictory.  But  he  says  J 
"  We  are  compelled  by  the  constitution  of  our  minds, 
"  to  believe  in  the  existence  of  an  Absolute  and  Infinite 
"Being."  Such  being  the  case,  I  ask,  is  the  Being,  whom 
we  must  believe  to  be  infinite  and  absolute,  infinite  and 
absolute  in  the  meaning  which  those  terras  bear  in  Mr. 
Mansel's  definition  of  them  ?  If  not,  he  is  bound  to  tell 
us  in  what  other  meaning.  Believing  God  to  be  infinite 
and  absolute  must  be  believing  something,  audit  must  be 
possible  to  say  what.  If  Mr.  Mansel  means  that  we 
must  believe  the  reality  of  an  Infinite  and  Absolute 
Being  in  some  other  sense  than  that  in  which  he  has 
proved  such  a  Being  to  be  inconceivable,  his  point  is  not 
made  out,  since  he  undertook  to  prove  the  inconceiva- 
bility of  the  very  Being  in  whose  reality  we  are  required 
to  believe.  But  the  truth  is  that  the  Infinite  and  Abso- 
lute which  he  says  we  must  believe  in,  are  the  very 
Infinite  and  Absolute  of  his  definitions.  The  Infinite  is 
that  which  is  opposed  to  the  Finite  ;  the  Absolute,  that 
which   is   opposed  to  the  Eelative.     He  has   therefore 

*  "  A  thing — an  object— an  attribute — a  person — or  any  other  term  sig- 
'  nifying  one  out  of  many  possible  objects  of  consciousness,  is  by  that  very 
'  relation  necessarily  declared  to  be  finite.  An  infinite  thing,  or  object,  or 
'  atti-ibute,  or  person,  is  therefore  in  the  same  moment  declared  to  be  both 
'  finite  and  infinite.  .  .  And  on  the  other  hand,  if  all  hum  an  attributes  are 
'  conceived  under  the  conditions  of  difference,  and  relation,  and  time,  and 
'  personality,  we  cannot  represent  in  thought  any  such  attribute  magnified 
'  to  infinity  ;  for  this  again  is  to  conceive  it  as  finite  and  infinite  at  the 
'  same  time.  We  can  conceive  such  attributes,  at  the  utmost,  only  indefi,- 
'  nitely  ;  that  is  to  say,  we  may  withdraw  our  thoughts,  for  the  moment, 
'  from  the  fact  of  their  being  limited ;  but  we  cannot  conceive  them  as 
'  infinite  ;  that  is  to  say,  we  cannot  positively  think  of  the  absence  of  the 
'  limit;  for,  the  instant  we  attempt  to  do  so,  the  antagonist  elements  of 
'  the  conception  exclude  one  another,  and  annihilate  the  whole." — Limits 
of  Religious  'Ihought,  p.  bU. 

t  ibid.  p.  39.  X  Ibid.  p.  45. 


AS    APPLIED    BY    MR.    MAN8EL   TO   RELIGION.  123 

either  proved  nothing,  or  vastly  more  than  he  intended. 
For  the  contradictions  which  he  asserts  to  be  involved 
in  the  notions,  do  not  follow  from  an  imperfect  mode 
of  apprehending  the  Infinite  and  Absolute,  but  lie  in 
the  definitions  of  them  ;  in  the  meaning  of  the  phrases 
themselves.  The  contradictions  are  in  the  very  object 
which  we  are  called  upon  to  believe.  If,  therefore,  Mr. 
Mansel  would  escape  from  the  conclusion  that  an  Infi- 
nite and  Absolute  Being  is  intrinsically  impossible,  it 
must  be  by  affirming,  with  Hegel,  that  the  law  of 
Contradiction  does  not  apply  to  the  x\bsolute ;  that, 
respecting  the  Absolute,  contradictory  propositions  may 
both  be  true.* 

Let  us  now  pass  from  Mr.  Hansel's  metaphysical 
argumentation  on  an  irrelevant  issue,  to  a  much  more 
important  subject,  that  of  his  practical  conclusion,namely, 
that  we  cannot  know  the  divine  attributes  in  such  a 
manner,  as  can  entitle  us  to  reject  any  statement  respect- 

*  Mr.  Mansel's  summary  of  hia  reply  on  this  portion  of  tlie  case  is  aa 
follows  (pp.161,  162):  "The  reader  may  now,  perhaps,  understand  the 
"  reason  of  an  assertion  which  Mr.  Mill  regards  as  supremely  absurd, 
"  namely,  that  we  must  believe  in  the  existence  of  an  absolute  and  infinite 
"  Being,  though  unable  to  conceive  the  nature  of  such  a  Being.  To  be- 
"  lieve  in  such  a  Being  is  simply  to  believe  that  God  made  the  world  :  to 
"  declare  the  nature  of  such  a  Being  inconceivable,  is  simply  to  say  that 
"  we  do  not  know  how  the  world  was  made.  If  we  believe  that  God  made 
"  the  world,  we  must  believe  that  there  was  a  time  when  the  world  was  not, 
"  and  when  God  alone  existed,  out  of  relation  to  any  other  being.  But 
"  the  mode  of  that  sole  existence  we  are  unable  to  conceive,  nor  in  what 
"  manner  the  first  act  took  place  by  which  the  absolute  and  self -existent 
"  gave  existence  to  the  relative  and  dependent." 

I  know  not  how  Mr.  Mansel  discovers  that  I  regard  as  supremely  absurd 
the  notion  that  we  may  believe,  and  may  have  good  grounds  for  believing, 
things  which  are  inconceivable  to  us.  As  he  most  truly  says,  there  is  no 
one  with  whose  mode  of  thinking  such  an  opinion  would  more  flagrantly 
conflict.  But  I  venture  to  think  that  one  may  deem  it  possible  to  have  a 
real  and  positive,  though  inadequate,  conception  of  an  infinite  Being, 
without  supposing  oneself  to  know  how  God  made  the  world.  Mr.  Mansel 
resumes  (p.  163)  "  Where  is  the  incongruity  of  saying,  I  believe  that  a 
"  being  exists  possessing  certain  attributes,  though  I  am  unable  in  mj^ 
"present  state  of  knowledge  to  conceive  the  manner  of  that  existence ?  * 
Assuredly,  nowhere  :  provided  that  you  do  not  invest  the  object  of  your 
belief  with  contradictory  attributes  ;  for  my  admission  of  the  believability 
of  what  is  inconceivable,  stops  at  the  self-contradictory  :  consequently  I 
do  not  admit  the  believability  of  such  an  Absolute  and  Infinite  as  Mr. 
Mansel  has  been  mystifying  us  with.  The  sum  of  what  I  am  maintaining 
against  him  is,  that  the  Absolute  and  Infinite  which  are  believable,  and 


124  THE   PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    CONDITIONED 

ing  the  Deity,  on  the  ground  of  its  being  inconsistent 
with  his  character.  Let  us  examine  whether  this  asser- 
tion is  a  legitimate  corollary  from  the  relativity  of 
human  knowledge,  either  as  it  really  is,  or  as  it  is  under- 
stood to  be  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  by  Mr.  Hansel. 

The  fundamental  property  of  our  knowledge  of  Grod, 
Mr.  Mansel  says,  is  that  we  do  not  and  cannot  know 
him  as  he  is  in  himself:  certain  persons,  therefore,  whom 
he  calls  Rationalists,  he  condemns  as  unphilosophical, 
when  they  reject  any  statement  as  inconsistent  with 
the  character  of  God.  This  is  a  valid  answer,  as  far 
as  words  go,  to  some  of  the  later  Transcendentalists — to 
those  who  think  that  we  have  an  intuition  of  the  Divine 
Nature  ;  though  even  as  to  them  it  would  not  be  difficult 
to  show  that  the  answer  is  but  skin-deep.  But  those 
"  Eationalists"  who  hold,  with  Mr.  Mansel  himself,  the 
relativity  of  human  knowledge,  are  not  touched  by  his 
reasoning.  We  cannot  know  Grod  as  he  is  in  himself 
(they  reply) ;  granted  :  and  what  then  ?  Can  we  know 
man  as   he  is    in    himself,  or  matter  as  it  is  in  itself? 

the  Absolute  and  Infinite  whicli  are  inconceivable,  are  different  things " 
That  the  Absolute  and  Infinite  of  which,  as  he  has  shown,  the  conception 
annihilates  itself  by  the  contradictions  it  involves,  is  that  which  possesses 
absolutely  and  infinitely  all  attributes,  and  that  this  is  as  unbelievable  as 
it  is  inconceivable :  That  the  Absolute  and  Infinite  which  is  believable  is 
that  which  possesses  absolutely  and  infinitely  some  given  attributes,  which 
in  their  finite  degrees  are  known  to  us,  and  is  therefore  conceivable ;  and 
involves  no  contradiction,  unless  we  include  among  the  attributes  some 
that  contradict  one  another,  in  which  case  it  is  indeed  inconceivable,  but 
also  unbelievable. 

When  Mr.  Mansel  maintains  (pp.  14-18,  and  142)  that  being  infinite  is, 
to  our  conceptive  faculty,  inconsistent  with  being  a  Person,  I  answer,  that 
it  is  being  "  The  Infinite  "  which  is  so.  When  he  insists  (if  he  does  insist) 
that  the  Creator  must,  in  some  manner  inconceivable  to  iis,  be  this  non- 
entity ;  when  he  identifies  the  Creator  (p.  100)  with  something  which  we 
rttust  believe  to  be  "  the  sole  existence,  having  no  plurality  beyond  itself," 
and  "  simple,  having  no  plurality  within  itself,"  thus  literally  annihilating 
all  plurality  in  the  universe ;  when  he  says  (pp.  28,  29)  "  we  believe  that  " 
God's  "own  nature  is  simple  and  uniform,  admitting  of  no  distinction 
between  various  attributes,  nor  betvireen  any  attribute  and  its  subject," 
bu't'yet  conceivable  by  us  "only  by  means  of  various  attributes,  distinct 
from  the  subject  and  from  each  other,"  i.e.  conceived  by  us  as  he  is  nut ; 
it  appears  to  me  that  in  thus  following  the  old  theologians  in  the  mystical 
metaphysics  which  is  always  at  the  service  of  mystical  theology,  he  en- 
cumbers Theism  and  Christianity  with  (to  say  the  least)  very  unnecessary 
difficulties. 


AS    APPLIED    BY    MR.    MANSEL    TO     RELIGION.  125 

We  do  not  claim  any  otlier  knowledge  of  God  than  such 
as  we  have  of  man  or  of  matter.  Because  I  do  not 
know  my  fellow-men,  nor  any  of  the  powers  of  nature, 
as  they  are  in  themselves,  am  T  therefore  not  at  liberty 
to  disbelieve  anything  I  hear  respecting  them  as  being 
inconsistent  with  their  character  ?  I  know  something 
of  Man  and  Nature,  not  as  they  are  in  themselves,  but 
as  they  are  relatively  to  us  ;  and  it  is  as  relative  to  us, 
and  not  as  he  is  in  himself,  that  I  suppose  myself  to 
know  anything  of  Grod.  The  attributes  which  I  ascribe 
to  him,  as  goodness,  knowledge,  power,  are  all  relative. 
They  are  attributes  (says  the  rationalist)  which  my  expe- 
rience enables  me  to  conceive,  and  which  I  consider  as 
proved,  not  absolutely,  by  an  intuition  of  God,  but  phaeno- 
menally,  by  his  action  on  the  creation,  as  known  through 
my  senses  and  my  rational  faculty.  These  relative 
attributes,  each  of  them  in  an  infinite  degree,  are  all  I 
pretend  to  predicate  of  God.  When  I  reject  a  doctrine 
as  inconsistent  with  God's  nature,  it  is  not  as  being  in- 
consistent with  what  God  is  in  himself,  but  with  what 
he  is  as  manifested  to  us.  If  my  knowledge  of  him  is 
only  phsenomenal,  the  assertions  which  I  reject  are 
phsenomenal  too.  If  those  assertions  are  inconsistent 
with  my  relative  knowledge  of  him,  it  is  no  answer  to 
say  that  all  my  knowledge  of  him  is  relative.  That  is 
no  more  a  reason  against  disbelieving  an  alleged  fact  as 
unworthy  of  God,  than  against  disbelieving  another 
alleged  fact  as  unworthy  of  Turgot,  or  of  Washington, 
whom  also  I  do  not  know  as  Noumena,  but  only  as 
Phsenomena. 

There  is  but  one  way  for  Mr.  Mansel  out  of  this  diffi- 
culty, and  he  adopts  it.  He  must  maintain,  not  merely 
that  an  Absolute  Being  is  unknowable  in  himself,  but 
that  the  Relative  attributes  of  an  Absolute  Being  are 
unknowable  likewise.  He  must  say  that  we  do  not  know 
what  Wisdom,  Justice,  Benevolence,  Mercy,  are,  as  they 
exist  in  God.  Accordingly  he  does  say  so.  The  follow^ 
ing  are  his  direct  utterances  on  the  subject :  as  an  im- 
plied doctrine,  it  pervades  his  whole  argument. 


126  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE   CONDITIONED 

"  Tt  is  a  fact  *  which  experience  forces  upon  us,  and 
'  which  it  is  useless,  were  it  possible,  to  disguise,  that 
'  the    representation    of   God    after  the    model   of  the 
'  highest    human    morality   which    we    are    capable    of 
'  conceiving,  is    not    sufficient    to   account    for  all   the 
'  phenomena   exhibited   by  the  course    of  his    natural 
'  Providence.       The    infliction     of    physical    suffering, 
'  the    permission    of   moral   evil,  the   adversity  of   the 
'  good,  the  prosperity  of  the  wicked,  the  crimes  of  the 
'  guilty  involving  the  misery  of  the  innocent,  the  tardy 
'  appearance  and  partial  distribution  of  moral  and  reli- 
'  gious  knowledge  in  the  world — these  are  facts  which 
'  no  doubt  are  reconcilable,  we  know  not  how,  with  the 
'  Infinite  Goodness  of  God,  but  which  certainly  are  not 
'  to  be  explained  on  the  supposition  that  its  sole  and 
'  suM'cient  type  is  to  be  found  in  the  finite  goodness  of 
'  man."     In  other  words,  it  is  necessary  to  suppose  that 
the  infinite  goodness  ascribed  to  God  is  not  the  goodness 
which  we  know  and  love  in  our  fellow-creatures,  distin- 
guished  only  as  infinite  in  degree,  but  is  different  in 
kind,  and    another  quality  altogether.     When  we  call 
the  one  finite  goodness  and  the  other  infinite  goodness, 
we  do  not  mean  what  the  words  assert,  but  something 
else :  we  intentionally  apply  the  same  name  to  things 
which  we  regard  as  different. 

Accordingly  Mr.  Mansel  combats,  as  a  heresy  of  his 
opponents,  the  opinion  that  infinite  goodness  differs  only 
in  degree  from  finite  goodness.  The  notic>n  f  "  that  the 
"  attributes  of  God  differ  from  those  of  man  in  degree 
"  only,  not  in  kind,  and  hence  that  certain  mental  and 
"  moral  qualities  of  which  w^e  are  immediately  conscious 
"  in  ourselves,  furnish  at  the  same  time  a  true  and 
"  adequate  image  of  the  infinite  perfections  of  God," 
(the  word  adequate  must  have  slipped  in  by  inadvertence, 
since  otherwise  it  would  be  an  inexcusable  misrepresenta- 
tion) he  identifies  with  "  the  vulgar  Eationalism  which 
"  regards  the  reason  of  man,  in  its  ordinary  and  normal 

*  Limits  of  Eeligious  Thougtt,  Preface  to  the  fourth  edition,  p.  13* 
t  Ibid.  p.  26. 


AS    APPLIED    BY   MR.    M ANSEL   TO    RELIGION.  127 

"  operation,  as  the  supreme  criterion  of  religions  truth." 
And  in  characterizing  the  mode  of  arguing  of  this  vulgar 
Rationalism,  he  declares  its  principles  to  be,  that*  "  all 
"  the  excellences  of  which  we  are  conscious  in  the 
"  creature,  must  necessarily  exist  in  the  same  manner, 
"  though  in  a  higher  degree,  in  the  Creator.  God  is 
"  indeed  more  wise,  more  just,  more  merciful,  than  man; 
"  but  for  that  very  reason,  his  wisdom  and  justice  and 
"  mercy  must  contain  nothing  that  is  incompatible  with 
"  the  corresponding  attributes  in  their  human  character." 
It  is  against  this  doctrine  that  Mr.  Mansel  feels  called 
on  to  make  an  emphatic  protest. 

Here,  then,  I  take  my  stand  on  the  acknowledged 
principle  of  logic  and  of  morality^  that  when  we  mean 
different  things  we  have  no  right  to  call  them  by  the 
same  name,  and  to  apply  to  them  the  same  predicates, 
moral  and  intellectual.  Language  has  no  meaning 
for  the  words  Just,  Merciful,  Benevolent,  save  that  in 
which  we  predicate  them  of  our  fellow-creatures ;  and 
unless  that  is  what  we  intend  to  express  by  them,  we  have 
no  business  to  employ  the  words.  If  in  affirming  them 
of  God  we  do  not  mean  to  affirm  these  very  qualities, 
differing  only  as  greater  in  degree,  we  are  neither  philo- 
sophically nor  morally  entitled  to  affirm  them  at  all.  If 
it  be  said  that  the  qualities  are  the  same,  but  that  we 
cannot  conceive  them  as  they  are  when  raised  to  the 
infinite,  I  grant  that  we  cannot  adequately  conceive  them 
in  one  of  their  elements,  their  infinity.  But  we  cau 
conceive  them  in  their  other  elements,  which  are  the 
very  same  in  the  infinite  as  in  the  finite  development. 
Anything  carried  to  the  infinite  must  have  all  the  pro- 
perties of  the  same  thing  as  finite,  except  those  which 
depend  upon  the  finiteness.  Among  the  many  who 
have  said  that  we  cannot  conceive  infinite  space,  did  any 
one  ever  suppose  tliat  it  is  not  space  ?  that  it  does  not 
possess  all  the  properties  by  which  space  is  characterized? 
Infinite  Space  cannot  be  cubical  or  spherical,  because 
.these  are  modes  of  being   bounded :  but  does  any  one 

*  Limits  of  Eeligious  Thought,  p.  28. 


128  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF   THE   CONDITIONED 

imagine  that  in  ranging  through  it  we  might  arrive  at 
some  region  which  was  not  extended  ;  of  which  one  part 
was  not  outside  another ;  where,  though  no  Body  inter- 
vened, motion  was  impossible  ;  or  where  the  sum  of  two 
sides  of  a  triangle  was  less  than  the  third  side?  The 
parallel  assertion  may  be  made  respecting  infinite  good- 
ness. What  belongs  to  it  either  as  Infinite  or  as  Ab- 
solute I  do  not  pretend  to  know ;  but  I  know  that 
infinite  goodness  must  be  goodness,  and  that  what  is  not 
consistent  with  goodness,  is  not  consistent  with  infinite 
goodness.  If  in  ascribing  goodness  to  God  I  do  not 
mean  what  I  mean  by  goodness ;  if  I  do  not  mean  the 
goodness  of  which  I  have  some  knowledge,  but  an  in- 
comprehensible attribute  of  an  incomprehensible  sub- 
stance, which  for  aught  I  know  may  be  a  totally  diflferent 
quality  from  that  which  I  love  and  venerate — and  even 
must,  if  Mr.  Mansel  is  to  be  believed,  be  in  some  impor- 
tant particulars  opposed  to  this — what  do  I  mean  by 
calling  it  goodness?  and  what  reason  have  I  for  venerating 
it  ?  If  I  know  nothing  about  what  the  attribute  is,  I 
cannot  tell  that  it  is  a  proper  object  of  veneration.  To 
say  that  God's  goodness  may  be  different  in  kind  from 
man's  goodness,  what  is  it  but  saying,  with  a  slight 
chanjre  of  phraseology,  that  God  may  possiblj'^  not  be 
good?  To  assert  in  words  what  we  do  not  think  in 
meaning,  is  as  suitable  a  definition  as  can  be  given  of  a 
moral  falsehood.  Besides,  suppose  that  certain  unknown 
attributes  are  ascribed  to  the  Deit}"  in  a  religion  the 
external  evidences  of  which  are  so  conclusive  to  my  mind, 
as  efiectually  to  convince  me  that  it  comes  from  God. 
Unless  I  believe  God  to  possess  the  same  moral  attributes 
which  I  find,  in  however  inferior  a  degree,  in  a  good 
man,  what  ground  of  assurance  have  I  of  God's  veracity? 
All  trust  in  a  Revelation  presupposes  a  conviction  that 
God's  attributes  are  the  same,  in  all  but  degree,  with  the 
best  human  attributes. 

If,  instead  of  the  "  glad  tidings  "  that  there  exists  a 
Being  in  whom  all  the  excellences  which  the  highest- 
human  mind  can  conceive,  exist  in  a  degree  inconceivable 


To    VoU   *^   mJlX  «YO, 

AS    APPLIED   BY   MR.    MANSEL   TO    RELIGION.  129 

to  US,  I  am  informed  that  the  world  is  ruled  by  a  being 
whose  attributes  are  infinite,  but  what  they  are  we  cannot 
learn,  nor  what  are  the  principles  of  his  government,  ex- 
cept that  "the  highest  human  morality  which  we  are 
capable  of  conceiving"  does  not  sanction  them  ;  convince 
me  of  it,  and  I  will  bear  my  fate  as  I  may.  But  when 
I  am  told  that  I  must  believe  this,  and  at  the  same  time 
call  this  being  by  the  names  which  express  and  affirm 
the  highest  human  morality,  I  say  in  plain  terms  that  I 
will  not.  Whatever  power  such  a  being  may  have  over 
me,  there  is  one  thing  which  he  shall  not  do  :  he  shall 
not  compel  me  to  worship  him.  I  will  call  no  being 
good,  who  is  not  what  I  mean  when  I  apply  that 
epithet  to  my  fellow-creatures  ;*  and  if  such  a  being  can 
sentence  me  to  hell  for  not  so  calling  him,  to  hell  I 
will  go. 

Neither  is  this  to  set  up  my  own  limited  intellect  as 
a  criterion  of  divine  or  of  any  other  wisdom.  If  a  person 
is  wiser  and  better  than  myself,  not  in  some  unknown 
and  unknowable  meaning  of  the  terms,  but  in  their 
known  human  acceptation,  I  am  read}^  to  believe  that 
what  this  person  thinks  may  be  true,  and  that  what  he 
does  may  be  right,  when,  but  for  the  opinion  I  have  of 
him,  I  should  think  otherwise.  But  this  is  because  I 
believe  that  he  and  I  have  at  bottom  the  same  standard 
of  truth  and  rule  of  right,  and  that  he  probably  under- 
stands better  than  I  the  facts  of  the  particular  case.  If 
I  thought  it  not  improbable  that  his  notion  of  right 
might  be  my  notion  of  wrong,  I  should  not  defer  to  his 
judgment.  In  like  manner,  one  who  sincerely  believes 
in  an  absolutely  good  ruler  of  the  world,  is  not  war- 
ranted in  disbelieving  any  act  ascribed  to  him,  merely 
because  the  very  small  part  of  its  circumstances  which 
we  can  possibly  know  does  not  sufficiently  justify  it. 
But  if  what  am  I  told  respecting  him  is  of  a  kind  which 

*  Mr.  Mansel,  in  his  rejoinder,  says  that  this  means  that  I  will  call  no 
being  good  "  the  phenomena  of  whose  action  in  any  way  differ  from  those 
of  a  good  man."  This  is  a  misconstruction ;  he  should  have  said  "  no 
"  being,  the  principle  or  rule  of  whose  action  is  different  from  that  by 
"  which  a  good  man  endeavours  to  regulate  his  actions." 


130  THE   PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    CONDITIONED 

no  facts  that  can  be  supposed  added  to  my  knowledge 
could  make  me  perceive  to  be  right ;  if  his  alleged 
ways  of  dealing  with  the  world  are  such  as  no  imagi- 
nable hypothesis  respecting  things  known  to  him  and 
unknown  to  me,  could  make  consistent  with  the  good- 
ness and  wisdom  which  I  mean  when  I  use  the  terms, 
but  are  in  direct  contradiction  to  their  signification  ; 
then,  if  the  law  of  contradiction  is  a  law  of  human 
thought,  I  cannot  both  believe  these  things,  and  believe 
that  God  is  a  good  and  wis3  being.  If  I  call  any  being 
wise  or  good,  not  meaning  the  only  qualities  which  the 
words  import,  I  am  speaking  insincerely  ;  I  am  flattering 
him  by  epithets  which  I  fancy  that  he  likes  to  hear,  in 
the  hope  of  winning  him  over  to  my  own  objects.  For 
it  is  worthy  of  remark  that  the  doubt  whether  words 
applied  to  God  have  their  human  signification,  is  only 
felt  when  the  words  relate  to  his  moral  attributes  ;  it  is 
never  heard  of  in  regard  to  his  power  We  are  never 
told  that  God's  omnipotence  must  not  be  supposed  to 
mean  an  infinite  degree  of  the  power  we  know  in  man 
and  nature,  and  that  perhaps  it  does  not  mean  that  he  is 
able  to  kill  us,  or  consign  us  to  eternal  flames.  The 
Divine  Power  is  always  interpreted  in  a  completely 
human  signification,  but  the  Divine  Goodness  and  Jus- 
tice must  be  understood  to  be  such  only  in  an  unmtelli- 
gible  sense.  It  is  unfair  to  surmise  that  this  is  because 
those  who  speak  in  the  name  of  God,  have  need  of  the 
human  conception  of  his  power,  since  an  idea  which  can 
overawe  and  enforce  obedience  must  address  itself  to 
real  feelings ;  but  are  content  that  his  goodness  should 
be  conceived  only  as  something  inconceivable,  because 
they  are  so  often  required  to  teach  doctrines  respecting 
him  which  conflict  irreconcilably  with  all  goodness  that 
we  can  conceive  ?* 

*  I  quote  in  Mr.  Mansel's  words  nearly  the  whole  of  his  answer  to  the 
preceding  remarks  (pp.  164-170). 

"  Mr.  Mansel  asserts,  as  many  others  have  asserted  before  him,  that 
"  the  relation  between  the  communicable  attributes  of  God  and  the  corre- 
"  sponding  attributes  of  man  is  one  not  of  identity  but  of  analogy  ;  that  is 
"  to  say,  that  the  Divine  attributes  have  the  same  relation  to  the  Divine 


AS    APPLIED   BY    MR.    MANSEL    TO    RELIGION.  181 

I  am  anxious  to  say  once  more,  that  Mr.  Mansel's 
conclusions  do  not  go  the  whole  length  of  liis  arguments, 
and  that  he  disavows  tlie  doctrine  that  God's  justice  and 
goodness  are  wholly  different  from  what  human  beings 

j|"  nature  that  the  human  attributes  have  to  human  nature.  Thus,  for 
'"  example,  there  is  a  Divine  justice  and  there  is  a  human  justice ;  but  God 
"  is  just  as  the  Creator  and  Governor  of  l^ie  world,  having  unlimited 
"  authority  over  all  his  creatures,  and  unlimited  jurisdiction  over  all  their 
"  acts ;  and  man  is  just  in  certain  special  relations,  as  having  authority 
"  over  some  persons  and  some  acts  only,  so  far  as  is  required  for  the  needs 
'•  of  human  society.  So,  again,  there  is  a  Divine  mercy  and  there  is  a 
"  human  mercy  ;  but  God  is  merciful  in  such  a  manner  as  is  tilting  com- 
"  patibly  with  the  righteous  government  of  the  universe ;  and  man  is 
"  merciful  in  a  certain  limited  range,  the  exercise  6f  the  attribute  being 
"  guided  by  considerations  affecting  the  welfare  of  society  or  of  indi- 
"  viduals.  Or  to  take  a  more  general  case  :  Man  has  in  himself  a  rule  of 
"  right  and  wrong  implying  subjection  to  the  authority  of  a  suj^erior  (for 
•'  conscience  has  authority  only  as  reflecting  the  law  of  God) ;  while  God 
"  has  in  himself  a  rule  of  right  and  wrong,  implying  no  higher  authority, 
"  and  determined  absolutely  by  his  own  nature.  The  ease  is  the  same 
"  when  we  look  at  moral  attributes  not  externally  in  their  active  mani- 
"  festations,  but  internally,  in  their  psychological  constitution.  If  we  do 
"  not  attribute  to  God  the  same  complex  mental  constitution  of  reason, 
"  passion,  and  will,  the  same  relation  to  motives  and  inducements,  the 
"  same  deliberation  and  choice  of  alternatives,  the  same  temporal  succes-  . 
"  sion  of  facts  in  consciousness,  which  we  ascribe  to  man, — it  will  follow 
"  that  those  psychological  relations  between  reason,  will,  and  desire, 
"  which  are  implied  in  the  conception  of  human  action,  cannot  represent 
"  the  Divine  excellences  in  themselves,  but  can  only  illustrate  them  by 
"  analogies  from  finite  things.  And  if  man  is  liable  to  error  in  judging  of 
"  the  conduct  of  his  fellow-men,  in  proportion  as  he  is  unable  to  place 
"  himself  in  their  position,  or  to  realize  to  himself  their  modes  of  thought 
"  and  principles  of  action — if  the  child,  for  instance,  is  liable  to  error  in 
"  judging  the  actions  of  the  man,  or  the  savage  of  the  civilised  man — surely 
"  there  is  far  more  room  for  error  in  men's  judgment  of  the  ways  of  God, 
"  in  proportion  as  the  difference  between  God  and  man  is  greater  than  the 
"  difference  between  a  man  and  a  child.  .  .  .  We  will  simply  ask,  whether 
"  Mr.  Mill  really  supposes  the  word  cjood  to  lose  all  community  of  mean- 
"  ing  when  it  is  applied,  as  it  certainly  is,  to  different  persons  among  our 
"  fellow  creatures  with  express  reference  to  their  different  duties  and 
"  different  qualifications  for  performing  them  ?  The  duties  of  a  father 
"  are  not  the  same  as  those  of  a  son ;  is  the  word  therefore  wholly 
"  equivocal  when  we  speak  of  one  person  as  a  good  father,  and  another  as 
"  a  good  son  ?  Nay,  when  we  speak  geueniUy  of  a  man  as  good,  has  not 
"  the  epithet  a  tacit  reference  to  human  nature  and  human  duties  ?  and 
"  yet  is  there  no  community  of  meaning  when  the  same  epithet  is  applied 
"  to  other  creatures  ?  'H  aptrr]  irpos  to  tpyov  to  oIkuop, — the  goodness  or 
"any  being  whatever  has  relation  to  the  nature  and  office  of  that  being. 
"  We  may  therefore  test  Mr.  Mill's  declamation  by  a  parallel  case.  A 
"  wise  and  experienced  father  addresses  a  young  and  inexperienced  son : 
"  'My  son,'  he  says,  'there  may  be, some  of  my  actions  which  do  not 
"  seem  to  you  to  be  wise  or  good,  or  such  as  you  would  do  in  my  place. 
"  Eemember,  however,  that  your  duties  are  different  from  mine .;  thit 

K    2 


132  THE    PHILOSOPHY  OF    THE    CONDITIONED 

understand  by  the  terms.  He  would,  and  does,  admit 
that  the  qualities  as  conceived  by  us  bear  some  likeness 
to  the  justice  and  goodness  which  belong  to  Grod,  since 
man  was  made  in    God's  image.      But    such    a    semi- 

"  your  knowledge  of  my  duties  is  very  imperfect ;  and  that  there  may  be 
"  things  which  you  cannot  now  see  to  be  wise  and  good,  bixt  which  you 
"  may  hereafter  discover  to  ipe  so.'  '  Father,'  says  the  son,  '  your  prin- 
"  ciples  of  action  are  not  the  same  as  mine ;  the  highest  morality  which 
*'  I  can  conceive  at  present  does  not  sanction  them  ;  and  as  for  believing 
"  that  you  are  good  in  anything  of  which  I  do  not  plainly  see  the  good- 
"  ness'— we  will  not  repeat  Mr.  Mill's  alternative ;  we  will  only  ask 
"  whether  it  is  not  just  possible  that  there  may  be  as  much  difference 
"  between  man  and  God  as  there  is  between  a  child  and  his  father  ?" 

There  is  a  mode  of  controversy  which  I  do  not  remember  to  have  seen 
in  any  enumeration  of  Fallacies,  but  which  will  some  day  fiud  a  place 
there,  under  some  such  name  as  the  Inversion  of  Parts.  It  consists  in 
indignantly  vindicating  as  against  your  adversary  the  very  principle 
which  he  is  asserting  against  yourself.  Would  not  any  reader  of  the 
above  passage  suppose  that  it  is  Mr.  Mansel  who  is  contending  against 
me  for  the  "  community  of  meaning"  of  the  word  good,  to  whatever  being 
it  is  applied  ;  instead  of  me  against  him  ?  It  is  I  who  say  that  as  good- 
ness in  a  good  father  is  the  very  same  quality  with  goodness  in  a  good 
son,  so  goodness  in  a  good  God  must  be,  in  all  but  degree,  the  same  quality 
as  goodness  in  a  good  man,  or  we  are  not  entitled  to  call  it  goodness. 
It  is  Mr.  Mansel  who  denies  this,  affirming  that  there  is  more  than  a 
difference  of  degree.  And  unless  he  is  to  be  understood  as  surrendering 
this  point  by  the  illustrations  he  now  employs,  his  defence  is  no  defence 
aft  all ;  for  it  confounds  a  difference  in  the  outward  circumstances  in  which 
a  moral  quality  has  to  be  exercised,  with  a  difference  in  the  quality  itself. 
In  his  imaginary  dialogue  between  a  son  and  a  father,  does  the  son  really 
tliink  the  father's  conduct  inconsistent  with  such  goodness  as,  under  the 
father's  teaching,  he  has  realized  in  himself,  or  learnt  to  recognise  in 
others  ?  Does  he  not  t"hink  that  it  is  the  same  goodness,  but  acting  under 
a  knowledge  of  facts,  and  an  appreciation  of  means,  such  as  he  does  not 
himself  possess  ?  Does  the  son  think  that  the  father's  conduct  is  not 
justifiable  by  the  same  moral  law  which  he  prescribes  to  the  son,  and 
that  in  order  to  justify  the  father  it  is  necessary  to  suppose  him  actuated 
by  another  hind  of  morality,  not  the  same,  but  merely  having  the  same 
relation  to  the  father's  nature  that  the  other  goodness  has  to  the  son's 
nature  ^  If  the  son  has  implicit  confidence  in  the  father,  he  will  not 
answer,  in  the  words  put  into  his  mouth  by  Mr.  Mansel,  "your  prin- 
ciples of  action  are  not  the  same  as  mine."  He  will  say,  "  your  prin- 
ciples of  action  I  well  know :  they  are  those  which  you  have  taught  to 
me — those  by  which,  in  my  best  moments,  I  endeavour,  though  with 
inferior  strength,  to  guide  my  conduct.  You  are  incapable  of  acting  on 
any  others.  Knowing  your  principles,  and  not  knowing  what  conduct, 
inyoiir  different  position,  the  principles  require,  but  being  convinced  that 
you  do  know,  I  am  certain  that  you  act  on  those  principles  "  All  the 
allowance  for  human  ignorance  which  can  be  demanded  on  similar  grounds 
in  judging  of  what  is  ascribed  to  God,  I  have  amply  granted. 

On  the  latter  part  of  the  paragraph  in  the  text,  Mr.  Mansel  makes  some 
further  remarks.  To  the  statement  that  "  the  doubt  whether  words 
*'  applied  to  God  have  their  human  signification,   is  only  felt  when  the 


AS    APPLIED    BY  MR.    MAHSEL   TO    RELIGION.  133 

concession,  which  no  Christian  could  avoid  making, 
since  without  it  the  whole  Christian  scheme  would  be 
subverted,  cannot  save  him  ;  he  is  not  relieved  by  it 
from  any  difficulties,  while  it  destroys  the  whole  fabric 
of  his  argument.  The  Divine  goodness,  which  is  said  to 
be  a  diiferent  thing  from  human  goodness,  but  of 
which  the  human  conception  of  goodness  is  some  im- 
perfect reflexion  or  resemblance,  does  it  agree  with  what 
men  call  goodness  in  the  essence  of  the  quality — ^in  what 
constitutes  it  goodness  ?  If  it  does,  the  "  Rationalists" 
are  right ;  it  is  not  illicit  to  reason  from  the  one  to  the 

"  words  relate  to  his  moral  attributes — it  is  never  heard  of  in  regard  to 
"  his  power,"  Mr.  Mansel  makes  answer  (p.  172),  "  We  meet  Mr.  Mill's 
"  contident  assertion  with  a  direct  denial,  and  take  the  opportunity  of  in- 
"  forming  him  that  the  conception  of  infinite  Power  has  suggested  the 
"  same  difficulties,  and  has  been  discussed  by  philosophers  and  theologians 
"  in  the  same  manner,  as  those  of  infinite  Wisdom  and  infinite  Groodness. 
"  Has  Mr.  Mill  never  heard  of  such  questions  as,  Whether  Omnipotence  can 
"  reverse  the  past  ? — Whether  God  can  do  that  which  he  does  not  will  to 
"  do  ? — Whether  God's  perfect  foreknowledge  is  compatible  with  his  own 
"  perfect  liberty  ? — Whether  God  could  have  made  a  better  world  than  the 
"  existing  one  ?"  In  return  for  the  information  thus  liberally  bestowed,  I 
humbly  reply,  that  I  have  "  heard  of  such  questions  :"  but  I  see  in  them 
(with  the  exception  of  the  second,  which  relates  to  the  meaning  of  Power, 
not  of  Infinite  power)  only  enquiries,  mostly  frivolous,  how  much  more 
power  God  has  than  man.  There  is  no  difference  in  the  conception  of  the 
power  itself,  which  is  in  both  cases  the  same,  namely,  the  contbrmity  of  the 
event  to  the  volition.  The  divine  omnipotence  is  always  supposed  to  mean 
an  infinite  degree  of  this,  and  not  of  anything  else.  But  infinite  goodness, 
according  to  Mr.  Mansel,  means  not  an  infinite  degree,  but  a  different 
kind,  not  admitting  of  any  common  definition  vdth  human  goodness. 

[Mr.  Mansel's  answer  to  this  is  a  curious  one.  He  says  that  "  if  power, 
"  as  predicated  of  man,  means  the  conformity  of  the  event  to  the  volition, 
"  man  assuredly  can  do  no  more  than  he  actually  wills  to  do ;  for  there  can 
"  be  no  conformity  except  wherethere  is  a  volition  and  an  event."  We  may 
know  that  the  event  would  conform  to  our  volition  although  it  has  not 
actually  taken  place.  Most  people,  I  believe,  if  they  said  that  they  had  the 
power  of  throwing  themselves  into  a  well,  would  mean  that  if  they  willed 
so  to  throw  themselves,  the  effect  would  follow.  And  if  it  were  asked 
whether  there  are  any  limits  to  God's  power,  the  question  would  mean.  Is 
there  anything  which  if  willed  by  him,  nevertheless  would  not  take  place. 
What  else  can  be  meant  when  we  speak  of  a  living  being  as  having  power, 
I  cannot  divine.] 

The  concluding  sentence  Mr.  Mansel  censures  as  attributing  discredit- 
able motives  to  opponents.  Had  it  not  been  for  this  proof,  I  should  have 
thought  it  unnecessary  to  say,  that  no  imputation  was  intended  on  the 
sincerity  either  of  classes  or  of  individuals.  But  the  effect  of  men's  fie- 
cessities  of  position  on  their  opinions  as  well  as  on  their  conduct,  is  far 
too  widely  reaching  and  influential  an  element  in  human  affairs,  to  be 
always  passed  over  in  silence  for  fear  of  offending  personal  susceptibilities. 


134  THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF  THE    CONDITIONED 

oilier.  If  not,  the  divine  attribute,  whatever  else  it  may 
be,  is  not  goodness,  and  ought  not  to  be  called  by  the 
name>  Unless  there  be  some  human  conception  which 
agrees  with  it,  no  human  name  can  properly  be  applied 
to  it ;  it  is  simply  the  unknown  attribute  of*  a  thing  un- 
known ;  it  has  no  existence  in  relation  to  us,  we  can 
affirm  nothing  of  it,  and  owe  it  no  worship.  Such  is 
the  inevitable  alternative.* 

To  conclude :  Mr.  Mansel  has  not  made  out  any  con- 
nexion between  his  philosophical  premises  and  his  theo- 
logical conclusion.  The  relativity  of  human  knowledge, 
the  uncognoscibility  of  the  Absolute,  and  the  contra- 
dictions which  follow  the  attempt  to  conceive  a  Being 
with  all  or  without  any  attributes,  are  no  obstacles  to 

*  Mr.  Mansel  says  (p.  175), "  The  question  really  at  issne  is  not  whether 
"  the  Rationalist  argument  is  licit  or  illicit,  but  whether,  in  its  lawful 
"  use,  it  is  to  be  regarded  as  infallible  or  fallible."  If  this  were  all,  there 
would  be  nothing  for  him  and  the  Rationalists  to  quarrel  about ;  for  who 
ever  asserted,  of  any  human  reasoning,  that  it  is  infallible  ?  Neither,  I 
believe,  would  any  "  Rationalist"  diss6nt  from  Mr.  Mansel's  view  of  the 
"lawful  use"  of  the  argument,  which  he  declares  throughout  his  Eighth 
Lecture  to  be  only  admissible  (as  one  argument  among  others)  on  the 
question  of  the  authenticity  of  a  Revelation.  No  Rationalists,  I  should 
suppose,  believe  that  what  they  reject  as  inconsistent  with  the  Divine 
Groodness  was  really  revealed  by  God.  They  do  not  both  admit  it  to  be 
revealed  and  believe  it  to  be  false.  They  believe  that  it  is  either  a  mis- 
taken interpretation,  or  found  its  way  by  human  means  into  documents 
which  they  may  nevertheless  consider  as  the  records  of  a  Revelation.  They 
concede,  therefore,  to  Mr.  Mansel  (and  unless  the  hypothesis  were  admitted 
of  a  God  who  is  not  good,  they  cannot  help  conceding)  that  the  moral  objec- 
tions to  a  religious  doctrine  are  only  valid  against  its  truth  if  they  are 
strong  enough  to  outweigh  whatever  external  evidences  there  may  be  of 
its  having  been  divinely  I'evealed.  But  when  the  question  is,  how  much 
weight  is  to  be  allowed  to  moral  objections,  the  difference  will  be  radical 
between  those  who  think  that  the  Divine  Goodness  is  the  same  thing  with 
human  goodness  carried  to  the  infinite,  and  Mr.  Mansel,  who  thinks  that 
it  is  a  different  quality,  only  having  some  analogy  to  the  human.  Indeed 
it  is  hard  to  see  how  any  one,  who  holds  the  latter  opinion,  can  give  more 
than  a  nominal  weight  to  any  such  argument  against  a  religious  doctrine. 
For,  if  things  may  be  right  according  to  divine  goodness  which  would  be 
wrong  according  to  even  an  infinite  degree  of  the  human,  and  if  all  that 
is  known  is  that  there  is  some  analogy  between  the  two,  while  no  one 
pretends  to  have  any  knowledge  how  far  the  analogy  reaches,  and  it  may 
be  presumed  to  be  as  distant  as  the  remainder  of  the  Divine  Nature  is 
from  the  human,  it  is  impossible  to  assign  any  determinate  weight  to  an 
argument  grounded  on  contradiction  of  such  an  analogy.  It  becomes  a 
mere  dialectical  locus  cotnmunis :  an  argument  to  be  taken  up  and  laid 
down  as  suits  convenience,  and  which  different  men  will  hold  valid  in 
different  cases,  according  to  their  fancies  or  prepossessions. 


AS   APPLIED    BY    MR.    MANSEL    TO   RELIGION.  135 

our  having  the  same  kind  of  knowledge  of  God  which 
we  have  of  other  things,  namely  not  as  they  exist  abso- 
lutely, but  relatively.     The  proposition,  that  we  cannot  I 
conceive  the  moral  attributes  of  God  in  such  a  manner  ' 
as  to  be  able  to  affirm  of  any  doctrine  or  assertion  that 
it  is  inconsistent  with  them,  has  no  foundation  in  the 
laws  of  the  human  mind :  while,  if  admitted,  it  would  j 
not  prove  that  we  should  ascribe  to  God  attributes  bear-  j 
ing  the  same  name  as  human  qualities,  but  not  to  be  1 
understood  in  the  same  sense ;  it  would  prove  that  we 
ought  not  to  ascribe  any  moral  attributes  to  God  at  all, 
inasmuch  as  no  moral  attributes  known  or  conceivable  i 
by  us  are  true  of  him,  and  we  are  condemned  to  absolute  [ 
ignorance  of  him  as  a  moral  being. 


136 


CHAPTER  YIIL 


or    CONSCIOUSNESS,    AS   UNDERSTOOD    BY    SIR   WILLIAM 
HAMILTON. 

In  the  discussion  of  the  Relativity  of  huraan  knowledge 
and  the  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned,  we  have  brought 
under  consideration  those  of  Sir.  W.  Hamilton's  meta- 
physical doctrines  which  have  the  greatest  share  in 
giving  to  his  philosophy  the  colour  of  individuality 
which  it  possesses,  and  the  most  important  of  those 
which  can  be  regarded  as  belonging  specially  to  himself 
On  a  certain  number  of  minor  points,  and  on  one  of 
primary  importance,  Causation,  we  shall  again  have  to 
examine  opinions  of  his  wdiich  are  original.  But  on 
most  of  the  subjects  which  remain  to  be  discussed,  at 
least  in  the  psychological  department  (as  distinguished 
from  the  logical),  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  merely  an  eminent 
representative  of  one  of  the  two  great  schools  of  meta- 
physical thought ;  that  which  derives  its  popular 
appellation  from  Scotland,  and  of  which  the  founder 
and  most  celebrated  champion  was  a  philosopher  whom, 
on  the  whole.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  seems  to  prefer  to  any 
other,  Dr.  Eeid.  For  the  future,  therefore,  we  shall  be 
concerned  less  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  philosophy  as 
such,  than  with  the  general  mode  of  thought  to  which  it 
belongs.  We  shall  be  engaged  in  criticizing  doctrines 
common  to  him  with  many  other  thinkers ;  but  in  doing 
so  we  shall  take  his  writings  as  text-books,  and  deal  with 
the  opinions  chiefly  in  the  form  in  which  he  presented 
them.  No  other  course  would  be  so  fair  to  the  opinions 
themselves  :  not  only  because  they  have  not,  within  the 
last  half  century,  had  so  able  a  teacher,  and  never  one 


CONSCIOUSNESS.  137 

so  well  acquainted  with  the  teachings  of  others,  hut  also 
because  he  had  the  great  advantage  of  coming  last.  All 
theories,  at  their  commencement,  bear  the  burthen  of 
mistakes  and  inadvertences  not  inherent  in  the  theories 
themselves,  but  either  personal  to  their  authors,  or  arising 
from  the  imperfect  state  of  philosophical  thought  at 
the  time  of  their  origin.  At  a  later  period,  the  errors 
which  accidentally  adhered  to  the  theory  are  stript  off, 
the  most  obvious  objections  to  it  are  perceived,  and  more 
or  less  successfully  met,  and  it  is  rendered,  at  least 
apparently,  consistent  with  such  admitted  truths  as  it  at 
first  seemed  to  contradict.  One  of  the  unfairest,  though 
commonest  tricks  of  controversy,  is  that  ol  directmg  the 
attack  exclusively  against  the  first  crude  form  of  a 
doctrine.*  Whoever  should  judge  Locke's  philosophy 
as  it  is  in  Locke,  Berkeley's  philosophy  as  it  is  in 
Berkeley,  or  Reid's  as  it  in  Reid,  would  often  condemn 
them  on  the  ground  of  incidental  misapprehensions, 
which  form  no  essential  part  of  their  doctrine,  and  froai 
which  its  later  adherents  and  expositors  are  free.  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  is  the  latest  form  of  the  E,eidian  theory  ; 
and  by  no  other  of  its  supporters  has  that  tlieory  been 
so  well  guarded,  or  expressed  in  such  discriminating  terms, 
and  with  such  studious  precision.  Though  there  are  a 
few  points  on  which  the  earlier  philosopher  seems  to  me 
nearer  the  truth,  on  the  whole  it  is  impossible  to  pass 
from  Reid  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  or  from  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
back  to  Reid,  and  not  be  struck  with  the  immense  pro- 
gress which  their  common  philosophy  has  made  in  the 
interval  between  them. 

All  theories  of  the  human  mind  profess  to  be  inter- 
pretations of  Consciousness:  the  conclusions  of  all  of  them 
are  supposed  to  rest  on  that  ultimate  evidence,  either 
immediately  or  remotely.  What  Consciousness  directly 
reveals,  together  with  what  can  be  legitimately  inferred 
from  its  revelations,  composes,  by  universal  admission, 

*  This,  for  example,  is  the  secret  of  most  of  the  apparent  triumphs 
which  are  so  frequently  gained  over  the  population  theory  of  Malthus,  and 
the  political  economy  of  Bicardo. 


138  CONSCIOUSNESS    AS   UNDERSTOOD 

all  that  we  know  of  the  mind,  or  indeed  of  any  other 
thing.  When  we  know  what  any  philosopher  considers 
to  he  revealed  in  Consciousness,  we  have  the  key  to  the 
entire  character  of  his  metaphysical  system. 

There  are  some  peculiarities  requiring  notice,  in  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  mode  of  conceiving  and  defining  Con- 
sciousness. The  words  of  his  definition  do  not,  of 
themselves,  indicate  those  peculiarities.  Consciousness, 
he  sa3^s,'^'  is  "  the  recognition  by  the  mind  or  ego  of  its 
own  acts  or  alfections ;"  and  in  this,  as  he  truly 
observes,  "  all  philosophers  are  agreed."  But  all 
philosophers  have  not,  by  any  means,  meant  the  same 
thing  by  it.  Most  of  them  (including  Reid  and  Stewart) 
have  meant,  as  the  words  naturally  mean.  Self-conscious- 
ness. They  have  held,  that  we  can  be  conscious  only  of 
some  state  of  our  own  mind.  The  mind's  "  own  acts  or 
affections"  are  in  the  mind  itself,  and  not  external  to 
it :  accordingly  we  have,  in  their  opinion,  the  direct 
evidence  of  consciousness,  only  for  the  internal  world. 
An  external  world  is  but  an  inference,  which,  according 
to  most  philosophers,  is  justified,  or  even,  by  our 
mental  constitution,  compelled :  according  to  others,  not 
justified. 

Nothing,  however,  can  be  farther  from  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton's mind  than  he  declares  this  opinion  to  be.  Though 
consciousness,  according  to  him,  is  a  recognition  of  the 
mind's  own  acts  and  alfections,  we  are  nevertheless  con- 
scious of  things  outside  the  mind.  Some  of  the  mind's 
acts  are  perceptions  of  outward  objects ;  and  we  are,  of 
course,  conscious  of  those  acts  :  now,  to  be  conscious  of 
a  perception,  necessarily  implies  being  conscious  of  the 
thing  perceived.  "  It  isf  palpably  impossible  that  we 
"  can  be  conscious  of  an  act,  without  being  conscious  of 
**  the  object  to  which  that  act  is  relative.  This,  how- 
"  ever,  is  what  Dr.  lieid  and  Mr.  Stewart  maintain. 
*'  They  maintain  that  I  can  know  that  I  know,  without 
*'  knowing  lohat  I  know — or  that  I  can  know  the  know- 
"  ledge  without  knowing  what  the  knowledge  is  about : 

*  Lectures,  i.  1^3  and  20i.  f  Ibid.  i.  212. 


BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON,  139 

"  for  example,  that  I  am  conscious  of  perceiving  a  book, 
"  without  beinc^  conscious  of  the  book  perceived, — that 
"  I  am  conscious  of  remembering  its  contents  without 
"  being  conscious  of  these  contents  remembered — and  so 
"  forth."  "  An  act*  of  knowledge  existing  and  being 
"  what  it  is  only  by  relation  to  its  object,  it  is  manifest 
"that  the  act  can  be  known  only  through  the  object  to 
"  which  it  is  correlative  ;  and  Keid's  supposition  that  an 
"  operation  can  be  known  in  consciousness  to  the  ex 
"  elusion  of  its  object,  is  impossible.  For  example,  I 
"  see  the  inkstand.  How  can  I  be  conscious  that  my 
"  present  modification  exists, — that  it  is  a  perception 
"  and  not  another  mental  state, — that  it  is  a  perception 
"  of  sight,  to  the  exclusion  of  every  other  sense, — and 
"  finally,  that  it  is  a  perception  of  the  inkstand,  and  of 
"  the  inkstand  only, — unless  my  own  consciousness  com- 
"  prebend  within  its  sphere  the  object,  which  at  once 
"  determines  the  existence  of  the  act,  quahfies  its  kind, 
"  and  distinguishes  its  individuality  ?  Annihilate  the 
"  inkstand,  you  annihilate  the  perception ;  anniliilate 
"  the  consciousness  of  the  object,  you  anniliilate  the 
"  consciousness  of  the  operation.  It  undoubtedly  sounds 
"  strange  to  say,  I  am  conscious  of  the  inkstand,  instead 
"  of  saying,  I  am  conscious  of  the  perception  of  the  ink- 
"  stand.  This  I  admit,  but  the  admission  can  avail 
"  nothing  to  Dr.  Keid,  for  the  apparent  incongruity  of 
"  the  expression  arises  only  from  the  prevalence  of  that 
"  doctrine  of  perception  in  the  schools  of  pliilosophy, 
"  which  it  is  liis  principal  merit  to  have  so  vigorously 
"  assailed." 

This  is  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  first  diflPerence,  on  the  sub- 
ject of  Consciousness,  from  his  predecessor,  Jtieid.  In 
being  conscious  of  those  of  our  mental  operations  which 
regard  ex:ternal  objects,  we  are,  accordmg  to  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  conscious  of  the  objects.  Consciousness, 
therefore,  is  not  solely  of  the  ego  and  its  modifications, 
but  also  of  the  non-e^o. 

This  first  difference  is  not  the  only  one.     Conscious- 

*  Lectures,  i.  228. 


< 


140  CONSCIOUSNESS    AS   UNDERSTOOD 

ness,  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  may  be  of  thingfs 
external  to  self,  but  it  can  only  be  of  things  actually 
present.  In  the  first  place,  they  must  be  present  inT 
time.  We  are  not  conscious  of  the  past.  Thus  far  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  agrees  with  Reid,  who  holds  that  memory 
is  of  the  past,  consciousness  only  of  the  present.  Reid, 
however,  is  of  opinion  that  memory  is  an  "  immediate 
knowledge  of  the  past,"  exactly  as  consciousness  is  an 
immediate  knowledge  of  the  present.  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
contends*  that  this  opinion  of  Reid  is  "  not  only  false," 
but  "involves  a  contradiction  in  terms."  Memory  is 
an  act,  and  an  act  "  exists  only  in  the  now  ;"  it  can  there- 
fore be  cognizant  only  of  what  now  is.  In  the  case  of 
memory,  what  now  is,  is  not  the  thing  remembered,  but 
a  present  representation  of  it  in  the  'mind,  which  re- 
presentation is  the  sole  object  of  consciousness.  We 
are  aware  of  the  past,  not  immediately,  but  mediately, 
through  the  representation.  "  An  act  of  memory,  is 
"  merely  a  present  state  of  mind,  which  we  are  con- 
"  scious  of,  not  as  absolute,  but  as  relative  to,  and  repre- 
"  senting,  another  state  of  mind,  and  accompanied  with 
"  the  belief  that  the  state  of  mind,  as  now  represented, 
"  has  actually  been.  .  .  .  All  that  is  immediately  known 
"  in  the  act  of  memory,  is  the  present  mental  modifi- 
"  cation ;  that  is,  the  representation  and  concomitant 
"belief  .  .  .  .  So  far  is  memory  from  being  an  imme- 
"  diate  knowledge  of  the  past,  that  it  is  at  best  only  a 
"  mediate  knowledge  of  the  past;  while  in  philosophical 
'  "  propriety,  it  is  not  a  knowledge  of  the  past  at  all, 
"  but  a  knowledge  of  the  present,  and  a  belief  of  the 
"  past.  .  .  .  We  may  doubt,  we  may  deny  that  the 
"  representation  and  belief  are  true.  We  may  assert  that 
"  they  represent  what  never  was,  and  that  all  beyond 
"their  present  mental  existence  is  a  delusion  :"  but  it  is 
impossible  for  us  to  doubt  or  deny  that  of  which  we  have 
immediate  knowledge. 

Again,  that  of  which  we  are  conscious  must  not  only 
be  present  in  time,  it  must  also,  if  external  to  our  minds, 
*  Lectures,  i.  218-221. 


\^  (5  x^JiK^j" 


BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON. 


141 


be  present  in  place.  Tt  must  be  in_ direct  contact  with 
our  bodily  organs.  We_do  not  immediately  perceive  a 
distant  object.  "  To  say,*  for  example,  that  we  perceive 
"  by  sight  the  sun  or  moon,  is  a  false  or  an  elliptical  ex- 
"  pression.  We  perceive  nothing  but  certain  modifica- 
"  tions  of  light,  in  immediate  relation  to  our  organ  of 
"  vision  ;  and  so  far  from  Dr.  Reid  being  philosophically 
**  correct  when  he  says  that  '  when  ten  men  look  at  the 
"  sun  or  moon,  they  all  see  the  same  individual  object,' 
"  the  truth  is  that  each  of  these  persons  sees  a  different 
"  object,  because  each  person  sees  a  different  complement 
"  of  rays,  in  relation  to  his  individual  organ ;"  to  which, 
in  another  place,  he  adds,  that  each  individual  sees  two 
different  objects,  with  his  lig'it  and  with  his  left  eye. 
"  It  is  not  by  perception,  but  by  a  process  of  reasoning, 
"  that  we  connect  the  objects  of  sense  with  existences 
"  beyond  the  sphere  of  immediate  knowledge.  It  is 
"  enougli  that  perception  affords  us  the  knowledge  of  the 
"  non-ego  at  the  point  of  sense.  To  arrogate  to  it  the 
"  power  of  immediately  informing  us  of  external  things 
"  which  are  only  the  causes  of  the  object  we  immediately 
"  perceive,  is  either  positively  erroneous,  or  a  confusion 
"  of  language  arising  from  an  inadequate  discrimination 
"  of  the  phsenomena."!  There  can,  I  think,  be  no  doubt 
that  these  remarks  on  knowledge  of  the  past  and  per- 
ception of  the  distant,  are  correct,  and  a  great  improve- 
ment upon  Eeid. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  true  definition  of  Conscious- 
ness in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  use  of  the  term,  would  be 
Immediate  Knowledge.     And  he  expressly  says,|  "Con- 


lie  3' 


< 


*  Lectures,  ii.  153. 

t  And  elsewhere  (foot-note  to  Eeid,  p.  302) : — "  It  is  self-evident  that 
"  if  a  thing  is  to  be  an  object  immediately  known,  it  must  be  known  as  it 
"  exists.  Now,  a  body  must  exist  in  some  definite  part  of  space,  in  a 
"  certain  jdace ;  it  cannot,  therefore,  be  immediately  known  as  existing, 
"except  it  be  known  in  its  place.  But  this  supposes  the  mind  to  be 
"  immediately  present  to  it  in  space." 

I  do  not  guarantee  the  conclusiveness  of  this  reasoning ;  but  it  has 
been  an  error  of  philosophers  in  all  times  to  flank  their  good  arguments 
with  bad  ones. 

i  Discussions,  p.  51 . 


142  CONSCIOUSNESS   AS    UNDERSTOOD 

"  sciousness  and  immediate  knowledge  are  thus  termg  uni- 
"  versally  convertible :  and  if  there  be  an  immediate 
"  knowledp^e  of  things  external,  there  is  consequently 
"  tlie  Consciousness  of  an  outer  world."  Immediate 
knowledge,  again,  he  treats  as  universally  convertible 
with  Intuitive  knowledge  :*  and  the  terms  are  really 
.equivalent.  We  know  intuitively,  what  we  know  by  its 
own  evidence — by  direct  apprehension  of  the  fact,  and 
not  through  the  medium  of  a  previous  knowledge  of  some- 
thing from  which  we  infer  it.  Regarded  in  this  light,  our 
author's  difference  with  Reid  as  to  our  being  conscious 
of  outward  objects,  would  appear,  on  his  own  showing, 
to  be  chiefly  a  dispute  about  words  :  for  Reid  also  says 
that  we  have  an  immediate  and  intuitive  knowledge  of 
things  without,  and  (if  Sir  W.  Hamilton  understands 
him  rightly)  that  it  is  immediate  and  intuitive  in  the 
same  meaning  and  mode,  as  that  claimed  for  us  by  Sir 
W.  Hamilton.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  stretches  the  word  Con- 
sciousness so  as  to  include  this  knowledge,  while  Reid, 
with,  greater  regard  for  the  origin  and  etymology  of  the 
word,  restricts  it  to  the  cases  in  which  the  mind  is 
"  conscia  sihi.'^  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  a  right  to  his  own 
use  of  the  term  ;  but  care  must  be  taken  that  it  do  not 
serve  as  a  means  of  knowingly  or  unknowingly  begging 
any  question.  One  of  the  most  disputed  questions  in 
psychology  is  exactly  this — Have  we,  or  not,  an  imme- 
diate intuition  of  material  objects?  and  this  question 
must  not  be  prejudged  by  affirming  that  those  objects 
are  in  our  consciousness.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  only 
allowable  to  say  that  they  are  in  our  consciousness, 
after  it  had  been  already  proved  that  we  cognise  them 
i  intuitively. 

It  is  a  little  startling,  after  so  much  has  been  said  of 

the  limitation  of  Consciousness  to  immediate  knowledge, 

to  find  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  in  the  Dissertations  on  Reid,t 

/  maintaining    that    *'  consciousness    comprehends    every 

[   "  cognitive  act ;  in   other  words,  whatever  we  are  not 

y^  "  conscious  of,  that  we  do  not  know."    If  consciousness 

*  Lectures,  i.  221,  note  ;  and  iv.  73.  f  P.  810. 


BY    SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  143 

comprehends  all  our  knowledge,  but  yet  is  limited  to  im- ! 
mediate  knowledge,  it  follows  that  all  our  knowledge  must 
be  immediate,  and  that  we  have,  therefore,  no  knowleds^e  [ 
of  the  past  or  of  the  absent.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  might 
have  cleared  up  this  difficulty  by  saying,  as  he  had  already 
done,  that  our  mediate  cognitions — those  of  the  past  and 
the  absent — though  he  never  hesitates  to  call  them  know- 
ledge, are  in  strict  propriety  Belief.  We  could  then  have 
understood  his  meaning.  But  the  explanation  he  ac- 
tually gives  is  quite  different.  It  is,  that  "all  our 
mediate  cognitions  are  contained  in  our  immediaTe." 
This  is  a  manifest  attempt  to  justify  himself  in  calling 
them,  not  belief,  but  knowledge,  like  our  immediate 
cognitions.  But  what  is  the  meaning  of  "  contained  ?" 
If  it  means  that  our  mediate  cognitions  are  j)art  of  our 
immediate,  then  they  are  themselves  immediate,  and  we 
have  no  mediate  cognitions.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  told 
us,  that  in  the  case  of  a  remembered  fact,  what  we  im- 
mediately cognise  is  but  a  present  mental  representation 
of  it,  "  accompanied  with  the  belief  that  the  state  of 
mind,  as  now  represented,  has  actually  been."  Having 
said  this,  he  also  says  that  the  past  fact,  which  does  not 
now  exist,  is  "  contained"  in  the  representation  and  in  the 
behef  which  do  exist.  But  if  it  is  contained  in  them,  it 
must  have  a  present  existence  too,  and  is  not  a  past  fact. 
Perhaps,  however,  by  the  word  "  contained,"  all  that  is 
meant  is,  that  it  is  implied  in  them ;  that  it  is  a  neces- 
sary or  legitimate  inference  from  them.  But  if  it  is  only 
this,  it  remains  absent  in  time  ;  and  what  is  absent  in 
time,  our  author  has  said,  is  not  a  possible  object  of 
consciousness.  If,  therefore,  a  past  fact  is  an  object  of 
knowledge,  we  can  know  what  we  are  not  conscious  of; 
consciousness  does  not  comprehend  all  our  cognitions. 
To  state  the  same  thing  in  another  manner ;  a  remem- 
bered fact  is  either  a  part  of  our  consciousness,  or  it  is 
not.  If  it  is,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  wrong  when  he  says 
that  we  are  not  conscious  of  the  past.  If  not,  he  is 
wrong,  either  in  saying  that  we  can  know  the  past,  or  in 
saying  that  what  we  are  not  conscious  of,  we  do  not  know. 


144  CONSCIOUSNESS    AS   UNDERSTOOD 

This  inconsistency,  which  emerges  only  in  the  Dis- 
sertations, I  shall  not  further  dwell  upon  :  it  is  chiefly 
important  as  showing  that  the  most  complicated  and 
elaborate  version  of  Sir  W".  Hamilton's  speculations  is 
^  not  always  the  freest  from  objection.  The  doctrine  of 
his  Lectures  is,  that  a  part  of  our  knowledge — the  know- 
'  ledge  of  the  past,  the  future,  and  the  distant — is  mediate 
and  representative,  but  that  such  mediate  knowledge  is 
not  Consciousness  ;  consciousness  and  immediate  know- 
\  ledge  being  coextensive. 
^  ^^  From  our  author's  different  deliverances  as  above 
i!^;v^  quoted,  it  appears  that  he  gives  two  definitions  of  Con- 
v  sciousness.     In  the  one,  it  is  synonymous  with  direct, 

immediate,  or  intuitive  knowledge  ;  and  we  are  conscious 
not  only  of  ourselves  but  of  outward  objects,  since,  in 
our  author's  opinion,  we  know  these  intuitively.  Ac- 
cording to  the  other  definition,  consciousness  is  the 
,  mind's  recognition  of  its  own  acts  and  affections.  It  is 
not  at  once  obvious  how  these  two  definitions  can  be 
reconciled:  for  Sir  W.  Hamilton  would  have  been  the 
last  person  to  say  that  the  outward  object  is  identical 
with  the  mental  act  or  affection.  He  must  have  meant 
that  consciousness  is  the  mind's  recognition  of  its  own 
acts  and  affections  tosrether  with  all  that  is  therein  im- 
])lied,  or  as  he  would  say,  contained.  But  this  involves 
him  in  a  new  inconsistency  :  for  how  can  he  then  refuse 
the  name  of  consciousness  to  our  mediate  knowledge — 
to  our  knowledge  or  belief  (for  instance)  of  the  past  ? 
The  past  reality  is  certainly  implied  in  the  present 
recollection  of  which  we  are  conscious :  and  our  author 
has  said  that  all  our  mediate  knowledge  is  contained  in 
our  immediate,  as  he  has  elsewhere  said  that  knowledge 
of  the  outward  object  is  contained  in  our  knowledge  of 
the  perception.  If,  then,  we  are  conscious  of  the  outward 
object,  why  not  of  the  past  sensa^tion  or  impression  ? 

From  the  definition  of  Consciousness  as  "  the  recog- 
nition by  the  mind  or  Ego  of  its  own  acts  or  affections," 
our  author  might  be  supposed  to  think  (as  has  been 
actually  thought  by  many  philosophers)  that  conscious- 


BY   SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON.  145 

ness  is  not  the  fact  itself  of  knowing  or  feeling,  but  a    T  ^  > 
subsequent  operation  by  which  we  become  aware  of  that       ^v,J^ 
fact.     This  however  is  not  his  opinion.     By  "  the  mind's      V^A*. 
recognition  of  its  acts  and  affections"  he  does  not  mean  j^ 

anything  different  from  the  acts  and  affections  them-  I  ^  J|ia« 
selves.  He  denies  that  we  have  one  faculty  by  which  ^^ 
we  know  or  feel,  and  another  by  which  we  know  that 
we  know,  and  by  which  we  know  that  we  feel.  These 
are  not,  according  to  him,  different  facts,  but  the  same 
fact  seen  under  another  point  of  view.  And  he  takes 
this  occasion  for  making  a  remark,  of  wide  application 
in  philosophy,  which  it  would  be  of  signal  service  to  all 
students  of  metaphysics  to  keep  constantly  in  mind ; 
that  difference  of  names  often  does  not  signify  difference 
of  things,  but  only  difference  in  the  particular  aspect 
under  which  a  thing  is  considered.     On  the  real  identity  ^^rv* 

between  our  various  mental  states  and  our  consciousness    .^>      : 
of  them,  he  seems  to  be  of  the  opinion  which  was  main- Jj[.^^' 
tained  before  him  by  Brown,  and  which  is  stated  by  Mr:  .\tV"l|^ 
James  Mill,  with  his  usual  clearness  and  force,  in  thej'^*'**'^''^ 
following  passage  :* —  Mo.*^  ' 

"  Having  a  sensation,  and  having  a  feeling,  are  not     ^        ^ 
two  things.    The  thing  is  one,  the  names  only  are  two.        ^^  ' 
I  am  pricked  by  a  pin.     The  sensation  is  one ;  but  I 
may  call  it  sensation,  or  a  feeling,  or  a  pain,  as  I  please. 
Now,  when,  having  the  sensation,  I  say  I  feel  the  sen- 
sation, I  only  use  a  tautological  expression ;  the  sensa- 
tion is  not  one  thing,  the  feeling  another ;  the  sensation 
is  the  feeling.     When  instead  of  the  word  feeling,  I 
use  the  word  conscious,  I  do  exactly  the  same  thing — 
I  merely  use  a  tautological  expression.     To  say  I  feel  a 
sensation,  is  merely  to  say  that  I  feel  a  feeling ;  which 
is  an  impropriety  of  speech.     And  to  say  I  am  con-       ^  ^^.. 
scions  of  a  feeling,  is  merely  to  say  that  I  feel  it.     To  i'*^ '     \^. 
have  a  feeling  is  to  be  conscious;  and  to  be  conscious  (     -r-^K  ^ 
is  to  have  a  feeling.    To  be  conscious  of  the  prick  of  the 
pin,  is  merely  to  have  the  sensation.     And  though  I 
have  these  various  modes  of  naming  my  sensation,  by 

*  Analyais  of  the  Human  Mind,  i.  170-173. 
L 


146  CONSCIOUSNESS    AS    UNDERSTOOD 

"  saying,  I  feel  the  prick  of  a  pin,  I  feel  the  pain  of  a 
**  prick,  I  have  the  sensation  of  a  prick,  I  have  the  feel- 
"  ing  of  a  prick,  I  am  conscious  of  the  feeling ;  the  thing 
"  named  in  all  these  various  ways  is  one  and  the  same. 

"  The  same  explanation  will  easily  be  seen  to  apply  to 
"  ideas.  Though  at  present  I  have  not  the  sensation, 
"  called  the  prick  of  a  pin,  I  have  a  distinct  idea  of  it. 
"  The  having  an  idea,  and  the  not  having  it,  are  distin- 
"  guished  by  the  existence  or  non-existence  of  a  certain 
"  feeling.  To  have  an  idea,  and  the  feeling  of  that  idea,  are 
"  not  two  things  ;  they  are  one  and  the  same  thing.  To 
"  feel  an  idea,  and  to  be  conscious  of  that  feeling,  are  not 
"  two  things ;  the  feeling  and  the  consciousness  are  but 
"  two  names  for  the  same  thing.  In  the  very  word  feeling, 
"  all  that  is  implied  in  the  word  Consciousness  is  involved. 

"Those  philosophers,  therefore,  who  have  spoken  of 
"  Consciousness  as  a  feeling  distinct  from  all  other  feel- 
*'  ings,  committed  a  mistake,  and  one,  the  evil  conse- 
"  quences  of  which  have  been  most  important ;  for,  by 
*' combining  a  chimerical  ingredient  with  the  elements 
"  of  thought,  they  involved  their  enquiries  in  confusion 
*'  and  mystery  from  the  very  commencement. 

"  It  is  easy  to  see  what  is  the  nature  of  the  terms 
*'  Conscious  and  Consciousness,  and  what  is  the  marking 
*'  function  which  they  are  destined  to  perform.  It  was  of 
**  great  importance,  for  the  purpose  of  naming,  that  we 
"should  not  only  have  names  to  distinguish  the  different 
"classes  of  our  feelings,  but  also,  a  name  applicable 
"  equally  to  all  those  classes.  This  purpose  is  answered 
"  by  the  concrete  term.  Conscious,  and  the  abstract  of 
*'  it.  Consciousness.  Thus,  if  we  are  in  any  way  sen- 
*'  tient ;  that  is,  have  any  of  the  feelings  whatsoever  of  a 
"  living  creature ;  the  word  Conscious  is  applicable  to 
"the  feeler,  and  Consciousness  to  the  feeling;  that  is  to 
"  say,  the  words  are  Generical  marks,  under  which  all  the 
"  names  of  the  subordinate  classes  of  the  feelings  of  a 
"  sentient  creature  are  included.  When  I  smell  a  rose, 
"  I  am  conscious ;  when  I  have  the  idea  *of  a  fire,  I  am 
"  conscious ;  when  I  remember,  I  am  conscious ;  when  I 


BY   SIR  WILLIAM    HAMILTON, 


147 


"  reason,  and  when  I  believe,  T  am  conscious;  but  believing 
"  and  being  conscious  of  belief,  are  not  two  things,  they 
"  are  the  same  thing :  though  this  same  thing  I  can  name 
"  at  one  time  without  the  aid  of  the  generical  mark,  while 
"  at  another  time  it  suits  me  to  employ  the  crenerical 
"mark."  ^  t-    j  b 

Sir  W.   Hamilton's   doctrine  is  exactly  this,  except 
that  he  expresses  the  latter  part  of  it  in  less  perspicuous 
phraseology,  saying  that  consciousness  is   "  the  funda- 
mental form,  the  generic  condition  "  of  all  the  modes  of 
our  mental  activity;*    "in  fact,  the  general  condition 
of  their   existence."t      But,    while   holding   the    same 
theory  with  Brown   and   Mill,  he   completes  it  by  the 
addition  that  though  our   mental    states  and   our  con- 
sciousness of  them  are  only  the  same  fact,^  they  are  the 
same  fact  regarded  in  different  relations.      Considered 
liT themselves,  as  acts  and  feelings,  or  considered  in  rela- 
tion to  the  external  object  with  which  they  are  concerned, 
we  do  not  call  them  consciousness.     It  is  when  these 
mental  modifications  are  referred  to  a  subject  or  ego,  and 
looked  at  in  relation  to  Self,  that  consciousness  is  the 
terra  used  ;  consciousness  being  "the  self-affirmation  that 
certain  modifications  are  known  by  me,  and  that  these 
modifications     are     mine."j      In   this    self-affirmation, 
however,  no  additional  fact  is  introduced.     It  "  is  not  to 
be  viewed  as  anything  different  from  "  the  "  modifications 
themselves."     There  is  but  one   mental  phsenomenon, 
the  act  of  feeling  ;  but  as  this  implies  an  acting  or  feel- 
ing^ Self,  we  give  it  a  name  which  connotes  its  relation  to 
^e  Self,  and  that  name  is  Consciousness.     Thus,  "  con- 
sciousness and  knowledge  "§ — and  I  think  he  would  have 
added  feeling  (tbe  mind's  "  affections  ")  as  well  as  know- 
ledge— "  are  not  distinguished  by  different  words  as  dif- 
"  fereut  things,  but  only  as  the  same  thing  considered  in 
"  different  aspects.   The  verbal  distinction  is  taken  for  the 
"  sake  of  brevity  and  precision,  and  its  convenience  war- 
"  rants  its  establishment.  .  .  .  Though  each  term  of  a 


.*> 


*  Discussions,  p.  48. 
J  Ibid. 


l2 


f  Lectures,  i.  193. 
§  Ibid,  pp.  194,  6. 


.v>^ 


K  • 


148  CONSCIOUSNESS    As    UNDERSTOOD 

"  relation  necessarily  supposes  the  other,  nevertheless 
"  one  of  these  terms  may  he  to  us  the  more  interesting, 
"  and  we  may  consider  that  term  as  the  principal,  and 
"  view  the  other  only  as  subordinate  and  correlative. 
"  Now,  this  is  the  case  in  the  present  instance.     In  an 

I"  act  of  knowledge,  my  attention  may  be  principally 
"  attracted  either  to  the  object  known,  or  to  myself,  as 

I  "  the  subject  knowing ;  and  in  the  latter  case,  although 

: "  no  new  element   be  added  to  the  act^  the   condition 

I "  involved  in  it — /  know  that  I  know,  becomes  the 
"  primary  and  permanent  matter  of  consideration.     And 

,"  when,  as  in  the  philosophy  of  mind,  the  act  of  know- 
"  ledge  comes  to  be  specially  considered  in  relation  to 
"  the  knowing  subject,  it  is,  at  last,  in  the  progress  of 

, "  the  science,  found  convenient,  if  not  absolutely  neces- 
"  sary,  to  possess  a  scientific  word  in  which  this  point  of 
"  view   should   be    permanently   and   distinctively   em- 

i"  bodied." 

If  any  doubt  could  have  existed,  after  this  passage,  of 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  opinion  on  the  question,  it  would 
have  been  removed  by  one  of  the  fragments  recently 
published  by  his  editors,  in  continuation  of  the  Disserta- 
tions on  Eeid.     I  extract  the  words  :* — 

"  Consciousness  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  aught  dif- 
"  ferent  from  the  mental  modes  or  movements  them- 
"  selves.  It  is  not  to  be  viewed  as  an  illuminated  place 
"  within  which  objects  coming  are  presented  to,  and 
"  passing  beyond  are  withdrawn  from,  observation  ;  nor 
"  is  it  to  be  considered  even  as  an  observer — the  mental 
"  modes  as  phsenomena  observed.  Consciousness  is  just 
"  the  movements  themselves,  rising  above  a  certain 
"  degree  of  intensity.  ...  It  is  only  a  comprehensive 
"  word  for  those  mental  movements  which  rise  at  once 
"  above  a  certain  degree  of  intension."! 

*  Supplement  to  Reid,  p.  932. 
t  The  qualification  here  first  introduced,  of  "  rising  above  a  certain 
degree  of  intensity,"  has  reference  to  a  doctrine  of  our  author  to  be  fully 
considered  hereafter,  that  of  latent  mental  states.  It  makes  no  abatement 
from  the  doctrine  that  consciousness  of  a  feeling  is  the  feeling ;  for  mental 
states  which  are  not  intense  enough  to  rise  into  consciousness,  are,  accord- 


BY    SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  149 

We  now  pass  to  a  question  which  is  of  no  little  im- 
portance to  the  character  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  system 
of  philosophy.  We  found,  not  long  ago,  that  he  makes 
between  Knowledge  and  Belief  a  broad  distinction,  on 
which  he  lays  great  stress,  and  which  plays  a  con- 
spicuous part  both  in  his  own  speculations  and  in  those 
of  some  of  his  followers.  Let  us  now  look  at  this  distinc- 
tion in  the  light  thrown  upoD  it  by  those  doctrines  of 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  which  are  the  subject  of  the  present 
chapter. 

1'hough  Sir  W.  Hamilton  allows  a  mediate,  or  repre-  ( 
sentative,  knowledge  of  the  past  and  the  absent,  he  has 
told  us  that  "  in  philosophical  propriety  "  it  ought  not 
to  be  called  knowledge,  but  belief.     We  do  not,  properly 
speaking,  know  a  past  event,  but  believe  it,  by  reason  of 

ing  to  the  same  theory,  not  intense  enough  to  be  felt :  and  if  felt,  the 
feeling,  and  the  consciousness  of  the  feeling,  are  one  and  the  same. 

It  was  not  without  some  difficulty,  and  alter  considerable  study,  that  I 
was  able  to  satisfy  myself  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  held  the  sound  and 
rational  theory  with  which  I  have  credited  him  in  the  text.  For  he  often 
states  and  defends  his  doctrine  in  a  manner  which  might  lead  one  to  think, 
that  in  saying  that  to  know,  and  to  know  tha;  we  know,  are  but  one  fact, 
he  does  not  mean  one  fact,  but  two  facts  which  are  inseparable.  This 
misapprehension  of  his  meaning  is  favoured  by  the  repeated  use  of  (what 
we  seldom  meet  with  in  his  writings)  a  false  illustration  ;  that  of  the  sides 
and  angles  of  a  triangle.  "The  sides  suppose  the  angles — the  angles 
"  suppose  the  sides, — and,  in  fact,  the  sides  and  angles  are  m  themselves 
"  in  reality,  one  and  indivisible."  (Lectures,  i.  194.)  "  The  sides  and  angles 
"  of  a  triangle  (or  trilateral)  as  mutually  correlative — as  together  making 
"  up  the  same  simple  figure — and  as,  without  destruction  of  that  figure, 
"  actually  inseparable  from  it,  and  from  each  other,  are  really  one ;  but 
"  inasmuch  as  they  have  peculiar  relations,  which  may,  in  thought,  be 
"  considered  severally  and  for  themselves,  they  are  logically  twofold." 
(Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  806.)  According  to  this,  the  sides  are  in  reality 
the  angles  looked  at  in  a  particular  point  of  view ;  and  the  angles  th  - 
same  thing  as  the  sides,  regarded  in  a  particular  relation  to  something 
else.  When  this  was  the  illustration  selected  of  the  identity  between 
Consciousness  and  Knowledge,  it  was  natural  to  suppose  that  the  writer 
regarded  these  two  as  no  otherwise  one  than  the  sides  and  angles  of  a 
triangle  are.  But  a  closer  examination  has  satisfied  me  that  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  was  only  wrong  respecting  sides  and  angles,  and  not  respecting 
Consciousness  and  Knowledge.  On  the  former  subject  he  has  against  him 
not  only  the  reason  of  the  case,  but  his  own  authority;  for  he  says,  when 
discoursing  on  another  subject  (foot-note  to  Reid,  p.  590)  :  "  It  is  not  f 
"  more  reasonable  to  identify  sense  with  judgment,  because  the  fornaer  I 
*'  cannot  exist  without  an  act  of  the  latter.  Hum  it  would  he  to  identify  [ 
"  the  sides  and  angles  of  a  mathematical  figure,  because  sides  and  angles  | 
"  cannot  exist  apart  from  each  other." 


150 


CONSCIOUSNESS   AS    UNDERSTOOD 


> 


the  present  recollection  which  we  immediately  know. 
We  do  not,  properly  speaking,  perceive  or  know  the 
sun,  but  we  perceive  and  know  an  image  in  contact  with 
our  organs,  and  believe  the  existence  of  the  sun  through 
"  a  process  of  reasoning,"  which  connects  the  image 
that  we  directly  perceive,  with  something  else  as  its 
cause.  Again,  though  we  cannot  know  an  Infinite  or 
an  Absolute  Being,  we  may  and  ought  to  believe  in 
the  reality  of  such  a  Being.  But  in  all  these  cases  the 
belief  itself,  the  conviction  we  feel  of  the  existence  of 
the  sun,  and  of  the  reality  of  the  past  event,  and  which 
according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton  we  ought  to  feel  of  the 
jgxistence  of  a  Being  who  is  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute 
.rrthis  belief  is  a  fact  present  in  time  and  in  place — a, 
phsenomenon  of  our  own  mind;  of  this  we  are  conscious  ; 
this  we  immediately  know.  Such,  it  is  impossible  to 
doubt,  is  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  opinion. 

Let  us  now  apply  to  this  the  general  principle  em- 
phatically affirmed  by  him,  and  forming  the  basis  of  his 
argument  against  Reid  and  Stewart  on  the  subject  of 
Consciousness.  "  It  is  palpably  impossible  that  we  can 
"  be  conscious  of  an  act,  without  being  conscious  of  the 
"  object  to  which  that  act  is  relative.  The  knowledge 
"  of  an  operation  necessarily  involves  the  knowledge  of 
"  its  object."  "  It  is  impossible  to  make  consciousness 
"  conversant  about  the  intellectual  operations  to  the 
"  exclusion  of  their  objects,"  and  therefore,  since  we  are 
conscious  of  our  perceptions,  we  must  be  conscious  of 
the  external  objects  perceived.  Such  is  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton's theory.  But  perceptions  are  not  the  only  mental 
operations  we  are  conscious  of,  which  point  to  an  external 
object.  This  is  no  less  true  of  beliefs.  We  are  con- 
scious of  belief  in  a  past  event,  in  the  reality  of  a  distant 
body,  and  (according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton)  in  the  exis- 
tence of  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute.  Consequently,  on 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  principle,  we  are  conscious  of  the 
objects  of  those  beliefs ;  conscious  of  the  past  event, 
conscious  of  the  distant  body,  conscious  of  the  Infinite 
and  of  the  Absolute.     To  disclaim  this  conclusion  would 


BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  151 

be  to  bring  down  upon  himself  the  language  in  which 
he  criticized  Reid  and  Stewart ;  it  would  be  to  maintain 
"  that  I  can  know  that  I  [believe]  without  knowing  what 
"  I  [believe] — or  that  I  can  know  the  [belief]  without 
"  knowing  what  the  [belief]  is  about :  for  example,  that 
"  I  am  conscious  of  [remembering  a  past  event]  without 
"  being  conscious  of  [tlie  past  event  remembered] ;  that 
"I  am  conscious  of  [believing  in  Grod],  without  being 
"  conscious  [of  the  Grod  believed  in] ."     If  it  be  true  that 
"  an  act  of  knowledge  "  exists,  and  is  what  it  is,  "  only 
"  by  relation  to  its  object,"  this  must  be  equally  true 
of  an  act  of  belief:  and  it  must  be  as  "  manifest "  of  the 
one  act  as  of  the  other,  "that  it  can  be  known  only     y 
through  the  object  to  which  it  is  correlative."     There-  |i  \^ 
fore  past  events,  distant  objects,  and  the  Absolute,  inas-  | 
much  as  they  are  believed,  are  as  much  objects  of  im-  f 
mediate  knowledge  as  things  finite  and  present ;  since  \ 
they  are  presupposed  and  implicitly  contained  in  the  | 
mental  fact  of   belief,    exactly  as   a  present  object   is  | 
implicitly  contained  in  the  mental  fact  of  perception.  | 
Either,  therefore,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  was  wrong  in  his 
doctrine  that  consciousness  of  our  perceptions  implies 
consciousness  of  their  external  object,  or  if^he  was  right 
in  this,  the  distinction  between  Belief~and  Knowledge 
collapse^  :  all  objects  of  Belief  are  objects  of  Knowledge: 
Belief  and  Knowledge  are  the  same  thing :  and  he  was 
wrong  in  asserting  that  the  Absolute  ought  to  be  be- 
lieved, or  wrong  in  maintaining  against  Cousin  that  it  j 
is  incapable  of  being  known. 

Another  reasoner  might  escape  from  this  dilemma  uy 
saying  that  the  knowledge  of  tlie  object  of  belief,  which 
is  implied  in  knowledge  of  the  belief  itself,  is  not  know- 
ledge of  the  object  as  existing,  but  knowledge  of  it  as 
believed — the  mere  knowledge  what  it  is  that  we  believe. 
And  this  is  true;  but  it  could  not  be  said  by  Sir  W. 
Hamilton;  for  he  rejects  the  same  reasonable  explana- 
tion in  the  parallel  case.  He  will  not  allow  it  to  be 
said  that  when  we  have  what  we  call  a  perception,  and 
refer  it  to  an  external  object,  we  are  conscious  not  of  the 


152  CONSCIOUSNESS   AS   UNDERSTOOD 

external  object  as  existing-,  but  of  ourselves  as  inferring 
an  external    existence.     He   maintains  that  the   actual 
outward  existence  of  the  object  is  a  deliverance  of  con- 
sciousness, because   "  it  is   impossible   that  we   can  be 
"  conscious   of  an  act   without  being  conscious  of  the 
"  object  to  which  that  act  is  relative."    He  cannot,  then, 
reject  as  applied  to  the  act  of  Belief,  a  law  which,  when 
he  has  occasion  for  applying  it  to  the  acts  of  Perception 
and  Knowledge,  he  affirms   to  be  common   to    all    our 
f  mental  operations.     If  we  can  be  conscious  of  an  opera- 
i  tion  without  being  conscious  of  its  object,  the  realit3'  of 
an  external  world  is  not  indeed  subverted,  but  there  is  an 
I  end  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory  of  the  mode  in  which  it 
I  is  known,  and  to  his  particular  mode  of  proving  it. 

The  difficulty  in  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  thus 
involved  seems  to  have  become,  though  very  insuffi- 
ciently, perceptible  to  himself.  Towards  the  end  of  his 
Lectures  on  Logic,  after  saying*  that  "we  may  be  equally 
certain  of  what  we  believe  as  of  what  we  know,"  and 
that,  "  it  has,  not  without  ground,  been  maintained  by 
"  many  philosophers,  both  in  ancient  and  modern  times, 
*'  that  the  certainty  of  all  knowledge  is,  in  its  ultimate 
"  analysis,  resolved  into  a  certainty  of  belief,"  he  adds,t 
"  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  manifestation  of  this 
"  belief  necessarily  involves  knowledge  ;  for  we  cannot 
"  believe  without  some  consciousness  or  knowledge  of 
**  the  belief,  and  consequently  without  some  eonscious- 
*''  ness  or  knowledge  of  the  object  of  the  belief"  The 
remark  which  this  tardy  reflexion  suggests  to  him  is 
merely  this  : — "  The  consideration,  however,  of  the  rela- 
"  tion  of  Belief  and  Knowledge  does  not  properly  belong 
"  to  Logic,  except  so  iar  as  it  is  necessary  to  explain  the 
*'  nature  of  Truth  and  Error.  It  is  altogether  a  meta- 
"  physical  discussion ;  and  one  of  the  most  difficult  pro- 
"  blems  of  which  Metaphysics  attempts  the  solution." 
Accordingly,  he  takes  the  extremely  unphilosophical 
liberty  of  leaving  it  unsolved.  But  when  a  thinker  is 
(jompelled  by  one  part  of  his  philosophy  to  contradict 
*  Lectures,  iv.  70.  f  Ibid.  p.  73. 


BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  153 

another  part,  he  cannot  leave  the  conflicting  assertions 
standing,  and  throw  the  responsibility  of  his  scrape  on 
the  arduousness  of  the  subject.  A  palpable  self-contra- 
diction is  not  one  of  the  difficulties  which  can  be 
adjourned,  as  belonging  to  a  higher  department  of 
science.  Though  it  may  be  a  hard  matter  to  find  the 
truth,  that  is  no  reason  for  holding  to  what  is  self-con- 
victed of  error.  If  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory  of  con- 
sciousness is  correct,  it  does  not  leave  the  difference 
between  Belief  and  Knowledge  in  a  state  of  obscurity, 
but  abolishes  tliat  distinction  entirely,  and  along  with  it 
a  great  part  of  his  own  philosophy.  Li'  his  premises  are 
true,  we  not  only  cannot  believe  what  we  do  not  know, 
but  we  cannot  believe  that  of  which  we  are  not  con- 
scious ;  the  distinction  between  our  immediate  and  our 
mediate  or  representative  cognitions,  and  the  doctrine  of 
things  believable  but  not  knowable,  must  both  succumb; 
or  if  these  can  be  saved,  it  must  be  by  abandoning  the 
proposition,  which  is  at  the  root  of  so  much  of  his 
philosophy,  that  consciousness  of  an  operation  is  con- 
sciousness of  the  object  of  the  operation. 

But  when  Sir  W.  Hamilton  began  to  perceive  that  if 
his  theorj^  is  correct  nothing  can  be  believed  except  in 
so  far  as  it  is  known,  he  did  not  therefore  renounce  the 
attempt  to  distinguish  Belief  from  Knowledge.  In  the 
very  same  Lecture,  he  says,*  "  Knowledge  and  Belief  f 
"  differ  not  only  in  degree  but  in  kind.  Knowledge  is  a 
"  certainty  founded  upon  insight ;  Belief  is  a  certainty 
"  founded  upon  feeling.  The  one  is  perspicuous  and  ob- 
"  jective:  the  other  is  obscure  and  subjective.  Each,  how- 
"  ever,  supposes  the  other :  and  an  assurance  is  said  to 
"  be  a  knowledge  or  a  belief,  according  as  the  one  element 
"  or  the  other  preponderates."  If  Sir  W.  Hamilton  had 
bestowed  any  sufficient  consideration  on  the  difficulty,  he 
would  hardl}'-  have  consented  to  pay  himself  with  such 
mere  words.  If  each  of  his  two  certainties  supposes  the 
other,  it  follows  that  whenever  we  have  a  certainty 
founded  upon  feeling,  we  have  a  parallel  certainty, 
*  Lectures,  iv.  62» 


154  CONSCIOUSNESS   AS    UNDERSTOOD 

founded  upon  insight.  We  therefore  have  always  insight 
when  we  are  certain ;  and  we  are  never  certain  except 
to  the  extent  to  which  we  have  insight.  It  is  not  a  case 
in  which  we  can  talk  of  one  or  the  other  element  pre- 
ponderating. They  must  be  equal  and  coextensive. 
The  whole  of  what  we  know  we  must  believe ;  and  the 
whole  of  what  we  believe  we  must  know  :  for  we  know 
that  we  believe  it,  and  the  act  of  belief  "can  only  be 
known  through  the  object  to  which  it  is  correlative." 
Our  conviction  is  not  divided,  in  varying  proportions, 
between  knowledge  and  belief:  the  two  must  always 
keep  abreast  of  one  another. 

All  this  follows,  whatever  may  be  the  meaning  of  the 
"  in  sight"  which  forms  the  distinction  in  kind  between 
belief  and  knowledge.  But  what  is  this  insight  ? 
" The  immediate  consciousness  of  an  object"  (he  goes 
on  to  say)  "  is  called  an  intuition,  an  insight^*  So  that  if 
knowledge  is  distinguished  from  belief  by  being  grounded 
on  insight,  it  is  distinguished  by  being  grounded  on 
immediate  consciousness.  But  belief  also  supposes 
immediate  consciousness,  since  "  we  cannot  believe  with- 
"  out  some  consciousness  or  knowledge  of  the  belief,  and 
"  consequently  without  some  consciousness  or  knowledge 
"  of  the  object  of  the  belief"  Not  merely  without 
some  consciousness,  but,  if  our  author's  theory  is  correct, 
without  a  consciousness  coextensive  with  the  belief. 
As  far  as  we  believe,  so  far  as  we  are  conscious  of  the 
belief,  and  so  far,  therefore,  if  the  theorj'-  be  true,  we  are 
conscious  of  the  thing  believed. 

But  though  Sir  W.  Hamilton  cannot  extricate  himself 
from  tliis  entanglement,  having,  by  the  premises  he  laid 
down,  cut  off  his  own  retreat,  other  thinkers  can  find  a 
way  through  it.  For,  in  truth,  what  can  be  more  absurd 
than  the  notion  that  belief  of  anything  implies  know- 
ledge of  the  thing  believed  ?  Were  this  so,  there  could 
be  no  such  thing  as  false  belief  Every  day's  experience 
shows  that  belief  of  the  most  peremptory  kind — assurance 
founded  on  the  most  intense  "  feeling,"  is  compatible 
•  Lectures,  iv.  73. 


c 


BY   SIR    WILLIAM   HAMILTON.  165 

with  total  ignorance  of  the  thing  which  is  the  object  of 
belief;  though  of  course  not  with  ignorance  of  the  belief 
itself.  And  this  absurdity  is  a  full  refutation  of  the 
theory  which  leads  to  it — that  consciousness  of  an  opera- 
tion involves  consciousness  of  that  about  which  the 
operation  is  conversant.  The  theory  does  not  seem  so 
absurd  when  affirmed  of  knowledge  as  of  belief,  because, 
(the  term  knowledge  being  only  applied  in  common  par- 
lance to  what  is  regarded  as  true,  while  belief  may  con- 
fessedly be  false,)  to  say  that  if  we  are  conscious  of  our 
knowledge,  we  must  be  conscious  of  that  which  we  know, 
is  not  so  manifestly  ridiculous,  as  it  is  to  affirm  that  if 
we  are  conscious  of  a  mistaken  belief,  we  must  be  con- 
scious of  a  non-existent  fact.  Yet  the  one  proposition 
must  be  equally  true  with  the  other,  if  consciousness  of  an 
act  involves  consciousness  of  the  object  of  the  act.  It  is 
over  the  ruins-of  this  false  theory  that  we  must  force  our 
way  out  of  the  labyrinth  in  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has 
imprisoned  us.  It  may  be  true,  or  it  may  not,  that  an  | 
external  world  is  an  object  of  immediate  knowledge. 
But  assuredly  we  cannot  conclude  that  we  have  an  im- 
mediate knowledge  of  external  things,  because  we  have 
an  immediate  knowledge  of  our  cognitions  of  them ; 
whether  those  cognitions  are  to  be  termed  belief,  witii 
Reid,  or  knowledge,  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton.* 

*  Mr.  Mansel  (p.  129)  gets  over  this  criticism  on  Sir  W.  Hamilton  very 
easily.     *'  Hamilton,"  he  says,  "  maintains  that  we  cannot  be  conscious  of 
*'  a  mental  operation  without  being  conscious  of  its  object.     On  this  Mr. 
"  Mill  retorts,  that  if,  as  Hamilton  admits,  we  are  conscious  of  a  belief  in 
"  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute,  we  must  be  conscious  of  the  Infinite  and 
"  the  Absolute  themselves ;  and  such  consciousness  is  knowledge.     The  \    • 
"  fallacy  of  this  retort  is  transparent.     The  immediate  object  of  .Behef  is  \  <s,^^W 
"  a,  proposition  which  I  hold  to  be  true,  not  a  thing  apprehended  in  an  act^    ^ 
"  of  conception.     I  believe  in  an  Infinite  God  ;  i.e.,  I  believe  that  God  is  ■ 
"  TnHuTte.     I  believe  that  the  attributes  which  I  ascribe  to  God  exist  in 
"  him  in  an  infinite  degree.     Now,  to  believe  this  proposition  I  must,  of 
"  course,  be  conscious  of  its  meaning ;  but  I  am  not  therefore  conscious 
"  of  the  Infinite  God  as  an  object  of  conception ;  for  this  would  require 
"  further  an  apprehension  of  the  manner  in  which  these  infinite  attributes 
"  coexist  so  as  to  form  one  object." 

A  very  simple  explanation,  if  only  it  be  a  true  one.  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
had  no  need  to  feel  embarrassed  in  applying  his  doctrine,  that  the  know- 
ledge of  an  operation  involves  the  knowledge  of  its  object,  to  the  operation 
called  Belief ;  for  the  object  of  Belief  is  but  a  proposition,  and  knowledge 

^51  Hx  ctM'tU^vttrU  . 


156 


CONSCIOUSNESS. 


of  tlie  proposition  is  the  only  knowledge  required.  Strange,  that  when 
this  explanation  stood  so  obvious,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  should  have  missed 
it — should  not  only  have  felt  that  there  was  a  difficulty,  but  remanded  it 
to  the  abstruser  Metaphysics,  as  part  of  "  one  of  the  most  difficult  problems 
of  which  Metaphysics  attempts  the  solution."  Sir  W.  Hamilton  was  often 
confused  and  inconsistent,  but  rarely,  if  ever,  on  subjects  which  he  had 
studied,  supei-ficial.  He  would  have  brushed  away  Mr.  Mansel's  distinc- 
tion with  the  decisive  stroke  with  which  he  so  often  levels  at  fallacy.  The 
object  of  Belief  is  a  proposition  ;  but  is  not  the  object  of  Knowledge  pro- 
positions? Is  not  all  knowledge  a  series  of  judgments;  and  is  not  a 
judgment  expressed  in  words,  a  proposition  ?  It  is  true  that  knowledge 
is  of  things  ;  but  we  know  things  only  by  their  attributes  :  our  knowledge 
of  a  thing  is  made  up  of  our  knowledge  of  a  certain  number  of  its  attri- 
butes, every  one  of  which  may  be  expressed  in  a  proposition.  When  we 
are  said  to  know  a  Thing,  the  meaning  is  either  that  we  know  it  as  pos- 
sessing some  attribute,  or  that  we  know  it  and  its  attributes  together  as 
existing.  So  when  we  do  not  know  the  Thing,  but  have  a  beUef  respecting 
it,  the  belief  is  either  that  it  possesses  some  attribute,  or  is  a  belief  of  its 
existence,  which  is  called  believing  in  it.  When  the  question  is  one  of 
attributes,  the  object  of  belief  is  a  proposition,  but  so  is  the  object  of 
knowledge.  When  the  question  is  one  of  existence,  the  object  of  know- 
ledge is  a  Thing,  but  so  is  the  object  of  belief. 

The  "  Inquirer"  (pp.  31-33),  unlike  Mr.  Mansel,  thinks  that  this  is  "  a 
very  intricate  point ;"  that  there  is  a  real  metaphysical  difficulty,  and  that 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  was  aware  of  it;  that  he  perceived  two  facts,  both  true, 
which  he  could  not  reconcile  with  one  another,  and  that  he  died  without 
having  had  time  to  find  the  reconciliation.  On  this  I  remark,  first,  that 
the  difficulty  is  not  in  reconciling  two  facts,  but  two  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
opinions,  and  that  the  only  solution  would  be  to  give  up  one  of  them. 
Secondly,  that,  whatever  the  solution  might  be,  he  had  nearly  the  whole 
of  his  philosopliical  life  to  find  it  in  ;  for  the  inconsistent  opinions  are 
two  of  the  cardinal  doctrines  of  his  philosophy.  The  "  Inquirer"  thinks 
that  we  ought  to  look  indulgently  on  inconsistencies,  as  being  mere 
incidents  of  growths ;  as  indeed  they  are  in  a  learner,  who,  independently 
of  his  ignorance  of  Things,  is  not  yet  fully  master  of  his  own  thoughts : 
but  a  teacher  is  supposed  to  be  full  grown.  While  admitting  (p.  7)  that  I 
have  proved  against  Sir  W.  Hamilton  "  continual  inconsistencies  and  dis- 
crepancies," the  "  Inquirer"  maintains  that  all  sound  philosophy,  while 
incomplete,  must  be  liable  to  the  objection  of  inconsistency.  I  confess  I 
cannot  see  the  necessity  that  our  thoughts  should  be  contradictory  because 
our  knowledge  is  incomplete  ;  that  because  there  is  much  that  we  do  not 
know,  we  should  not  have  sufficiently  considered  what  we  do  know,  to 
avoid  holding  in  conjunction  opinions  which  conflict  with  one  another. 
The  "  Inquirer"  probably  confounds  two  diffprent  things  :  the  belief  in 
contradictories,  and  the  recognition  of  positive  truths  which  merely  limit 
one  another,  but  to  what  extent  or  at  what  points  we  cannot  yet  deter- 
mine. 


157 


CHAPTER  IX. 


OP   THE    INTERPRETATION    OF   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

According  to  all  philosophers,  the  evidence  of  Conscious-  "N 
ness,  if  only  we  can  obtain  it  pure,  is  conchisive.     This 
is  an  obvious,  but  by  no  means  a  mere  identical  proposi- 
tion.    If  consciousness  be  defined  as  intuitive  knovs^ledge, 
it  is  indeed  an  identical  proposition  to  say,  that  if  we 
intuitively  know  anything,  we  do  know  it,  and  are  sure 
of  it.     But  the  meaning  lies  in  the  appHed  assertion,    '     j^V^ 
that  we  do  know  some  things  immediately,  or  intuitively.   I^»  ^ 
That  we  must  do  so  is  evident,  if  we  know  anything;   ]o^,     ' 
for  what  we  know  mediately,  depends  for  its  evidence    <  \V^ 
on  our  previous  knowledge  of  something  else :  unless, 
therefore,  we  knew  something  immediately,  we  could  not 
know  anything  mediately,  and  consequently  could  not 
know  anything  at  all.     That  imaginary  being,  a  com-  » 

plete  Sceptic,  might  be  supposed  to  answer,  that  perhaps     v ,  v* 
we  do  not  know  anything  at  all.     I  shall  not  reply  to 
this  problematical  antagonist  in  the  usual  manner,  by 
telling  him  that  if  he  does  not  know  anything,  I  do.     I 
put  to  him    the  simplest  case  conceivable  of  immediate 
knowledge,  and  ask,  if  we  ever  feel  anything  ?     If  so, 
then,  at  the  moment  of  feeling,  do  we  know  that  we 
feel?     Or  if  he  will  not  call  this  knowledge,  will  he         %^^ 
deny  that  when  we  have  a  feeling,  we  have  at  least  some      ^^v*^'^ 
sort   of  assurance,    or  conviction,  of  having   it  ?     This    '  ^^^^* 
assurance  or  conviction  is  what  other  people  mean  by      V\jJ^ 
knowledge.     If  he  dislikes  the  word,  1  am  willing  in      V^ 
discussing  with  him  to  employ  some  other.     By  what-       V"^ 
ever  name  this  assurance  is  called,  it  is  the  test  to  which 


158  THE   INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS. 

we  bring  all  our  other  convictions.  He  may  say  it  is 
not  certain ;  but  such  as  it  may  be,  it  is  our  model  of 
certainty.  We  consider  all  our  other  assurances  and 
convictions  as  more  or  less  certain,  according  as  they 
approach  the  standard  of  this.  I  have  a  conviction  that 
there  are  icebergs  in  the  Arctic  seas.  I  have  not  had 
the  evidence  of  my  senses  for  it :  I  never  saw  an  iceberg. 
Neither  do  I  intuitively  believe  it  by  a  law  of  my  mind. 
My  conviction  is  mediate,  grounded  on  testimony,  and 
on  inferences  from  physical  laws.  When  I  say  I  am 
convinced  of  it,  I  mean  that  the  evidence  is  equal  to 
that  of  my  senses.  T  am  as  certain  of  the  fact  as  if  I 
^  J^had  seen  it.  And,  on  a  more  complete  analysis,  when  I 
^  say  I  am  convinced  of  it,  what  I  am  convinced  of  is  that 
if  I  were  in  the  Arctic  seas  I  should  see  it.  We  mean 
by  knowledge,  and  by  certaint}^,  an  assurance  similar  and^ 
equal  to  that  afforded  by  our  senses :  if  the  evidence  in_ 
any  other  case  can  be  brought  up  to  this,  we  desire  no 
more.  If  a  person  is  not  satisfied  with  this  evidence, 
it  is  no  concern  of  anybody  but  himself,  nor,  practically, 
of  himself,  since  it  is  admitted  that  this  evidence  is  what 
we  must,  and  may  with  full  confidence,  act  upon.  Ab- 
solute scepticism,  if  there  be  such  a  thing,  may  be  dis- 
missed from  discussion,  as  raising  an  irrelevant  issue, 
for  in  denying  all  knowledge  it  denies  none.  The  dog- 
matist may  be  quite  satisfied  if  the  doctrine  he  main- 
tains can  be  attacked  by  no  arguments  but  those  which 
apply  to  the  evidence  of  the  senses.  If  his  evidence  is 
equal  to  that,  he  needs  no  more;  nay,  it  is  philosophi- 
cally maintainable  that  by  the  laws  of  psychology  we 
can  conceive  no  more,  and  that  this  is  the  certainty 
which  we  call  perfect. 

The  verdict,  then,  of  consciousness,  or,  in  other  words, 
our  immediate  and  intuitive  conviction,  is  admitted,  on 
all  hands,  to  be  a  decision  without  appeal.  The  next 
question  is  to  what  does  consciousness  bear  witness  ? 
And  here,  at  the  outset,  a  distinction  manifests  itself, 
which  is  laid  down  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  and  stated,  in 


THE   INTERPRETATION   OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.  159 

a  very  lucid  manner,  in  the  first  volume  of  his  Lectures. 
I  give  it  in  his  own  words,* 

"  A  fact  of  consciousness  is  that  whose  existence  is 
"  given  and  guaranteed  by  an  original  and  necessary 
"  belief.  But  there  is  an  important  distinction  to  be 
"here  made,  which  has  not  only  been  overlooked  by  all 
"  philosopliers,  but  has  led  some  of  the  most  distin- 
"  guished  into  no  inconsiderable  errors. 

"  The  facts  of  consciousness  are  to  be  considered  in 
"  two  points  of  view ;  either  as  evidencing  their  own 
"  ideal  or  phaenomenal  existence,  or  as  evidencing  the 
"  objective  existence  of  something  else  beyond  them. 
"  A  belief  in  the  former  is  not  identical  with  a  belief  in 
"  the  latter.  The  one  cannot,  the  other  may  possibly, 
"  be  refused.  In  the  case  of  a  common  witness,  we 
"  cannot  doubt  the  fact  of  his  personal  reality,  nor  the 
"  fact  of  his  testimony  as  emitted, — but  we  can  alwavs 
"  doubt  the  truth  of  that  which  his  testimony  avers. 
"So  it  is  with  consciousness.  We  cannot  possibly 
"  refuse  the  fact  of  its  evidence  as  given,  but  we  may 
**  hesitate  to  admit  that  beyond  itself  of  which  it  assures 
"  us.  I  shall  explain  by  taking  an  example.  In  the 
*'  act  of  External  Perception,  consciousness  gives  as  a 
"  conjunct  fact,  the  existence  of  Me  or  Self  as  perceiving, 
"  and  the  existence  of  something  different  from  Me  or 
"  Self  as  perceived.  Now  the  reality  of  this,  as  a 
"  subjective  datum — as  an  ideal  phsenomenon — it  is 
"  absolutely  impossible  to  doubt  without  doubting  the 
"  existence  of  consciousness,  for  consciousness  is  itself 
"  this  fact ;  and  to  doubt  the  existence  of  consciousness 
*'  is  absolutely  impossible  ;  for  as  such  a  doubt  could  not 
*'  exist  except  in  and  through  consciousness,  it  would, 
**  consequently,  annihilate  itself  We  should  doubt  that 
"  we  doubted.  As  contained — as  given — in  an  act  of 
"  consciousness,  the  contrast  of  mind  knowing  and  mat- 
**  ter  known  cannot  be  denied. 

"  But  the  whole  phsenomenon  as  given  in  conscious- 
♦  Lectures,  i.  271-275. 


160  THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS. 

"  ness  may  be  admitted,  and  yet  its  inference  disputed. 
"  It  may  be  said,  consciousness  gives  the  mental  subject 
"  as  perceiving  an  external  object,  contradistinguished 
*'  from  it  as  perceived.  :  all  this  we  do  not,  and  cannot, 
"deny.  But  consciousness  is  only  a  phaenomenon ; — 
"  the  contrast  between  the  subject  and  object  may  be 
"  only  apparent,  not  real ;  the  object  given  as  an  exter- 
*'  nal  reality,  may  only  be  a  mental  representation  which 
"  the  mind  is,  by  an  unknown  law,  determined  uncon- 
"  sciously  to  produce,  and  to  mistake  for  something 
"  different  from  itself.  All  this  may  be  said  and  be- 
"  lieved,  without  self-contradiction, — nay,  all  this  has, 
"  by  the  immense  majority  of  modern  philosophers,  been 
"  actually  said  and  believed. 

"  In  like  manner,  in  an  act  of  Memory,  consciousness 
"  connects  a  present  existence  with  a  past.  I  cannot 
"  deny  the  actual  phaenomenon,  because  my  denial  would 
"  be  suicidal,  but  I  can  without  self-contradiction  assert 
"  that  consciousness  may  be  a  false  witness  in  regard  to 
"  any  former  existence  ;  and  I  may  maintain,  if  I  please, 
"  that  the  memory  of  the  past,  in  consciousness,  is 
"  nothing  but  a  phaenomenon,  which  has  no  reality 
"  beyond  the  present.  There  are  many  other  facts  of 
"  consciousness  which  we  cannot  but  admit  as  ideal 
"  phaenomena,  but  may  discredit  as  guaranteeing  aught 
"  beyond  their  phaenomenal  existence  itself.  The  legality 
"  of  this  doubt  I  do  not  at  present  consider,  but  only  its 
"  possibilit}'^ ;  all  that  I  have  now  in  view  being  to 
"  show  that  we  must  not  confound,  as  has  been  done, 
"  the  double  import  of  the  facts,  and  the  two  degrees  of 
"  evidence  for  their  reality.  This  mistake  has,  among 
"  others,  been  made  by  Mr.  Stewart.  .  .  . 

"  With  all  the  respect  to  which  the  opinion  of  so  dis- 
"  tinguished  a  philosopher  as  Mr.  Stewart  is  justly 
"  entitled,  I  must  be  permitted  to  say,  that  I  cannot. 
••  but  regard  his  assertion  that  the  present  existence  of 
"  the  phaenomena  of  consciousness  and  the  reality  of 
"  that  to  which  these  phaenomena  bear  witness,  rest  on 
"  a  foundation  equally  solid — as  wholly  untenable.     The 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.  161 

"  second  fact,  the  fact  testified  to,  may  be  worthy  of  all 
"  credit — as  I  aj^ree  with  Mr.  Stewart  in  thinking  that 
"  it  is ;  but  still  it  does  not  rest  on  a  foundation  equally 
"  solid  as  the  fact  of  the  testimony  itself.  Mr.  Stewart 
"  confesses  that  of  the  former  no  doubt  had  ever  been 
"  suggested  by  the  boldest  sceptic ;  and  the  latter,  in  so 
"  far  as  it  assures  us  of  our  having  an  Immediate  know- 
"  ledge  of  the  external  world, — which  is  the  case  alleged 
"  by  Mr.  Stewart, — has  been  doubted,  nay  denied,  not 
"  merely  by  sceptics,  but  by  modern  philosophers  almost 
"  to  a  man.  This  historical  circumstance,  therefore,  of 
"  itself,  would  create  a  strong  presumption,  that  the  two 
"  facts  must  stand  on  very  different  foundations ;  and 
"  this  presumption  is  confirmed  when  we  investigate  what 
"  these  ibundations  themselves  are. 

"  The  one  fact, — the  fact  of  the  testimony,  is  an  act 
"  of  consciousness  itself;  it  cannot,  therefore,  be  invali- 
'*  dated  without  self-contradiction.  For,  as  we  have 
"  frequently  observed,  to  doubt  of  the  reality  of  that  of 
"  which  we  are  conscious  is  impossible :  for  as  we  can 
"  only  doubt  through  consciousness,  to  doubt  of  con- 
"  sciousness  is  to  doubt  of  consciousness  by  consciousness. 
"  If,  on  the  one  hand,  we  affirm  the  reality  of  the  doubt, 
"  we  thereby  explicitly  affirm  the  reality  of  oouscious- 
"  ness,  and  contradict  our  doubt ;  if,  on  the  other  hand, 
"  we  deny  the  reality  of  consciousness,  we  implicitly 
"  deny  the  reality  of  our  denial  itself.  Thus,  in  the  act 
"  of  perception,  consciousness  gives,  as  a  conjunct  fact,  an 
'^  ego  or  mind,  and  a  non-ego  or  matter,  known  together, 
"  and  contradistinguished  from  each  other.  Now,  as  a 
"  present  phsenomenon,  this  double  fact  cannot  possibly 
"  be  denied,  i  cannot,  therefore,  refuse  the  fact,  that, 
"  in  perception,  I  am  conscious  of  a  phsenomenon  which 
"  I  am  compelled  to  regard  as  the  attribute  of  something 
"  different  from  my  mind  or  sell".  This  I  must  perforce 
"  admit,  or  run  into  self-contradiction.  But  admitting 
"  this,  may  I  not  still,  without  self-contradiction,  main- 
"tain  that  what  I  am  compelled  to  view  as  the  phae- 
"  nomenon  of  something  different  from  me  is  nevertheless 

M 


162  THE   INTERPRETATION    OF   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

"  (unknown  to  me)  only  a  modification  of  my  mind  ? 
"  In  this  I  admit  the  fact  of  the  testimony  of  conscious- 
"  ness  as  given,  but  deny  the  truth  of  its  report. 
"  Whether  this  denial  of  the  truth  of  consciousness  as  a 
"  witness  is  or  is  not  les^itimate,  we  are  not,  at  this 
"  moment,  to  consider:  all  I  have  in  view  at  present  is, 
*•  as  I  said,  to  show  that  we  must  distinguish  in  con- 
"  sciousness  two  kinds  of  facts, — the  fact  of  consciousness 
,"  testifying,  and  the  fact  of  which  consciousness  testifies; 
"  and  that  we  must  not,  as  Mr.  Stewart  has  done,  hold 
"  that  we  can  as  little  doubt  of  the  fact  of  the  existence 
"  of  the  external  world,  as  of  the  fact  that  consciousness 
"  gives  in  mutual  contrast,  the  phsenomenon  of  self  in 
"  contrast  to  the  phsenomenon  of  not-self." 

He  adds,  that  since  no  doubt  has  been,  or  can  be, 
entertained  of  the  facts  given  in  the  act  of  consciousness 
itself,  "  it  is  only  the  authority  of  these  facts  as  evidence 
"  of  something  beyond  themselves, — that  is,  only  the 
"  second  class  of  facts, — which  become  matter  of  discus- 
"  sion ;  it  is  not  the  reality  of  consciousness  that  we 
"  have  to  prove,  but  its  veracity." 

By  the  conception  and  clear  exposition  of  this  distinc- 
tion, Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  contributed  materially  to 
make  the  issues  involved  in  the  great  question  in  hand, 
more  intelligible  ;  and  the  passage  is  a  considerable  item 
for  the  appreciation  both  of  his  philosophy  and  of  his 
philosophical  powers.  It  is  one  of  the  proofs  that,  what- 
ever be  the  positive  value  of  his  achievements  in  meta- 
physics, he  had  a  greater  capacity  for  the  subject  than 
many  metaphysicians  of  high  reputation,  and  particularly 
than  his  two  distinguished  predecessors  in  the  same 
school  of  thought,  Eeid  and  Stewart. 

There  are,  however,  some  points  in  this  long  extract 
which  are  open  to  criticism.  The  distinction  it  draws, 
is,  in  the  main,  beyond  question,  just.  Among  the  facts 
which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  considers  as  revelations  of  con- 
sciousness, there  is  one  kind  which,  as  he  truly  says,  no 
one  does  or  can  doubt,  another  kind  which  they  can  and 
do.     The  facts  which  cannot  be  doubted  are  those  to 


THE   INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS. 


163 


which  the  word  consciousness  is  by  most  philosophers 
confined :  the  facts  of  internal  consciousness ;  "  the 
mind's  own  acts  and  affections."  What  we  feel,  we 
cannot  doubt  that  we  feel.  It  is  impossible  to  us  to  feel, 
and  to  think  that  perhaps  we  feel  not,  or  to  feel  not, 
and  think  that  perhaps  we  feel.  What  admits  of  being 
doubted,  is  the  revelation  which  consciousness  is  sup- 
posed to  make  (and  which  our  author  considers  as  itself 
consciousness)  of  an  external  reality.  But  according  to 
him,  though  we  may  doubt  this  external  reality,  we  are 
compelled  to  admit  that  consciousness  testifies  to  it. 
We  may  disbelieve  our  consciousness ;  but  we  cannot 
doubt  what  its  testimony  is.  This  assertion  cannot  be 
granted  in  the  same  unqualified  manner  as  the  others. 
It  is  true  that  I  cannot  doubt  my  present  impression :  I 
cannot  doubt  that  when  I  perceive  colour  or  weight,  I 
perceive  them  as  in  an  object.  Neither  can  I  doubt 
that  when  I  look  at  two  fields,  I  perceive  which  of  them 
is  the  farthest  off.  The  majority  of  philosophers,  how- 
ever, would  not  say  that  perception  of  distance  by  the 
eye  is  testified  by  consciousness ;  because  although  we 
really  do  so  perceive  distance,  they  believe  it  to  be  an 
acquired  perception.  It  is  at  least  possible  to  think  that 
the  reference  of  our  sensible  impressions  to  an  external 
object  is,  in  like  manner,  acquired ;  and  if  so,  though  a 
fact  of  our  consciousness  in  its  present  artificial  state,  it 
would  have  no  claim  to  the  title  of  a  fact  of  conscious 


, 


ness  generally,  or  to  the  unlimited  credence  given  to 
wliat  js^  originally  consciousness.  This  point  of  psy- 
chology we  shalT  have  l;b  discuss  farther  on. 

Another  remark  needs  to  be  made.  All  the  world 
admits  with  our  author,  that  it  is  impossible  to  doubt  a 
fact  of  internal  consciousness.  To  feel,  and  not  to  know 
that  we  feel,  is  an  impossibility.  But  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is 
not  satisfied  to  let  this  truth  rest  on  its  own  evidence.  He 
wants  a  demonstration  of  it.  As  if  it  were  not  sufficiently 
proved  by  consciousness  itself,  he  attempts  to  prove  it  by 
a  redticlio  ad  absurdum.  No  one,  he  says,  can  doubt  con- 
sciousness, because,  doubt  being  itself  coasciousness,  to 

M  2 


< 


< 


164 


THE    INTERPRETATION   OF    COxNSCIOIJSNESS. 


doubt  con  scion  sness  would  be  to  doubt  that  we  doubt. 
He  sets  so  high  a  value  on  this  argument,  that  he  is 
continual!}'"  recurring  to  it  in  his  writings ;  it  actually 
amounts  to  a  feature  of  his  philosophy.*  Yet  it  seems 
to  me  no  better  than  a  fallacy.  It  treats  doubt  as  some- 
thing positive,  like  certainty,  forgetting  that  doubt  is 
uncertainty.  Doubt  is  not  a  state  of  consciousness,  but 
the  negation  of  a  state  of  consciousness.  Being  nothing 
positive,  but  simply  the  absence  of  a  belief,  it  seems  to 
be  the  one  intellectual  fact  which  may  be  true  without 
self  affirmation  of  its  truth  ;  without  our  either  believing 
or  disbelieving  that  we  doubt.  If  doubt  is  anything 
other  than  merely  negative,  it  means  an  insufficient 
assurance ;  a  disposition  to  believe,  with  an  inability  to 
believe  confidently.  But  there  are  degrees  of  insuffi- 
ciency ;  and  if  we  suppose,  for  argument's  sake,  that  it 
is  possible  to  doubt  consciousness,  it  may  be  possible  to 
doubt  different  facts  of  consciousness  in  different  degrees. 
The  general  uncertainty  of  consciousness  might  be  the 
one  fact  that  appeared  least  uncertain.  The  saying  of 
Socrates,  that  the  only  thing  he  knew  was  that  he  knew 
nothing,  expresses  a  conceivable  and  not  inconsistent 
state  of  mind.  The  only  thing  he  felt  perfectly  sure  of 
may  have  been  that  he  was  sure  of  nothing  else.  Omit- 
ting Socrates  (who  was  no  sceptic  as  to  the  reality  of 
knowledge,  but  only  as  to  its  having  yet  been  attained) 
and  endeavouring  to  conceive  the  hazy  state  of  mind  of  a 
person  who  doubts  the  evidence  of  his  senses,  it  is  quite 


*  It  is  rather  more  speciously  put  in  a  foot-note  on  Reid  (p.  231) :  "  To 
"  doubt  that  we  are  conscious  of  this  or  that,  is  impossible.  For  the 
"  doubt  must  at  least  postulate  itself;  but  the  doubt  is  only  a  datum  of 
"  consciousness :  therefore  in  postulating  its  own  reality,  it  admits  the 
"  truth  of  consciousness,  and  consequently  annihilates  itself."  In  another 
foot-note  (p.  442j  he  says,  "  In  doubting  the  fact  of  his  consciousness,  the 
"  sceptic  must  at  least  affirm  the  fact  of  his  doubt ;  but  to  affirm  a  doubt 
"  is  to  affirm  the  consciousness  of  it ;  the  doubt  would,  therefore,  be  self- 
"  contradictory — i.e.,  annihilate  itself."  And  again  (Dissertations  on 
Eieid,  p.  744)  :  "As  doubt  is  itself  only  a  manifestation  of  consciousness, 
"^t  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  what  consciousness  manifests,  it  does 
"  manifest,  without  in  thus  doubting,  doubting  that  we  actually  doubt ; 
"that  is,  without  the  doubt  contradicting  and  therefore  annihilating 
"  itself.^' 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS.  165 

possible  to  suppose  him  doubtins:  even  whether  he 
doubts.  Most  people,  I  should  think,  must  have  found 
themselves  in  something  like  this  predicament  as  to 
particular  facts,  of  which  their  assurance  is  all  but 
perfect ;  they  are  not  quite  certain  that  they  are  un- 
certain.* 

But  though  our  author's  proof  of  the  position  is  as 
untenable  as  it  is  superfluous,  all  agree  with  him  in 
the  position  itself,  that  a  real  fact  of  consciousness 
cannot  be  doubted  or  denied.  Let  us  now,  therefore, 
return  to  his  distinction  between  the  facts  "given  in 
the  act  of  consciousness,"  and  those  "  to  the  reality  of 
which  it  only  bears  evidence."  These  last,  or,  in  other 
words,  "  the  veracity  of  consciousness,"  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
thinks  it  possible  to  doubt  or  deny ;  he  even  says,  that 
such  facts,  more  or  fewer  in  number,  have  been  doubted 

*  In  another  passage  of  our  author  (Lectures,  iv.  69),  the  same  argu- 
ment reappears  in  different  words,  and  for  a  different  purpose.  He  ia 
speaking  of  the  Criterion  of  Truth.  This  criterion,  he  says, "  is  the  neces- 
"  sity  determined  by  the  laws  which  govern  our  faculties  of  knowledge, 
"  and  the  consciousness  of  this  necessity  is  certainty.  That  the  necessity 
"  of  a  cognition,  that  is,  the  impossibility  of  thinking  it  other  than  as  it  is 
"  presented — that  this  necessity,  as  founded  on  the  laws  of  thought,  is 
"  the  criterion  of  truth,  is  shown  by  the  circumstance  that  where  such 
"  necessity  is  found,  all  doubt  in  regard  to  the  correspondence  of  the 
"  cognitive  thought  and  its  object  must  vanish ;  for  to  doubt  whether 
"  what  we  necessarily  think  in  a  certain  manner,  actually  exists  as  we 
"  conceive  it,  is  nothing  less  than  an  endeavour  to  think  the  necessary  as 
"  the  uot  necessary  or  the  impossible,  which  is  contradictory." 

It  is  very  curious  to  find  Sir  W.  Hamilton  maintaining  that  our  necessi- 
ties of  thought  are  proof  of  corresponding  realities  of  existence — that 
things  must  actually  be  so  and  so  because  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  think 
them  as  being  otherwise ;  forgetful  of  the  whole  "  Philosophy  of  the  Con- 
ditioned," and  the  principle  so  often  asserted  by  him,  that  things  may, 
nay,  must  be  true,  of  which  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  conceive  even  the 
possibility.  But  we  are  here  only  concerned  with  his  argument,  and  in 
that  he  forgets  that  to  doubt  is  not  a  positive  but  a  negative  fact.  It 
simply  means,  not  to  have  any  knowledge  or  assured  belief  on  the  subject. 
Now,  how  can  it  be  asserted  that  this  negative  state  of  mind  is  "  an 
endeavour  to  think  "  anything  ?  And  (even  if  it  were)  an  endeavour  to 
think  a  contradiction  is  not  a  contradiction.  An  endeavour  to  think  what 
cannot  be  thought,  far  from  being  impossible,  is  the  test  by  which  we 
ascertain  its  uuthinkability.  The  failure  of  the  endeavour  in  the  case 
supposed,  would  not  prove  that  what  we  were  endeavouring  to  think  was 
unreal,  but  only  that  it  was  unthinkable ;  which  was  already  assumed  in 
the  hypothesis  :  and  our  author  has  carried  us  round  a  long  circuit,  to 
return  to  the  point  from  which  we  set  out. 


> 


166  THE   INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS. 

or  denied  by  nearly  the  whole  body  of  modern  philo- 
sophers. But  this  is  a  statement  of  the  point  in  issue 
between  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  modern  philosophers,  the 
correctness  of  which,  I  will  venture  to  affirm  that  very 
few  if  any  of  them  would  admit.  He  represents  "  nearly 
the  whole  body  of  modern  philosophers"  as  in  the 
peculiar  and  paradoxical  position,  of  believing  that 
consciousness  declares  to  them  and  to  all  mankind  the 
truth  of  certain  facts,  and  then  of  disbelieving  those 
facts.  That  great  majority  of  philosophers  of  whom 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  speaks,  would,  I  apprehend,  altogether 
deny  this  statement.  They  never  dreamed  of  disputing 
the  veracity  of  consciousness.  They  denied  what  iSir 
W.  Hamilton  thinks  it  impossible  to  deny ;  the  fact  of 
its  testimony.  They  thought  it  did  not  testify  to  the 
facts  to  which  he  tliinks  it  testifies.  Had  the}^  thought 
as  he  does  respecting  the  testimony,  the}'-  would  have 
thought  as  he  does  respecting  the  facts.  As  it  is,  many 
of  them  maintained  that  consciousness  gives  no  testi- 
mony to  anything  beyond  itself;  that  whatever  know- 
ledge we  possess,  or  whatever  belief  we  find  in  ourselves, 
of  anything  but  the  feelings  and  operations  of  our  own 
minds,  has  been  acquired  subsequently  to  the  first  begin- 
nings of  our  intellectual  life,  and  was  not  witnessed  to 
by  consciousness  when  it  received  its  first  impressions. 
Others,  again,  did  believe  in  a  testimon}^  of  conscious- 
ness, but  not  in  the  testimony  ascribed  to  it  by  Sir  W. 
Hamilton.  Facts,  to  which  in  his  opinion  it  testifies, 
some  of  them  did  not  believe  at  all,  others  did  not  be- 
lieve them  to  be  known  intuitivel}^ ;  nay,  many  of  them 
both  believed  the  facts,  and  believed  that  they  were 
known  intuitively,  and  if  they  differed  from  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  differed  in  the  merest  shadow  of  a  shade ; 
yet  it  is  with  these  Jast,  as  we  shall  see,  that  he  has  his 
greatest  quarrel.  In  his  contest,  therefore,  with  (as  he 
says)  the  majority  of  philosophers.  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
addresses  his  arguments  to  the  wrong  point.  He  thinks 
it  needless  to  prove  that  the  testimony  to  which  he 
appeals,  is  really  given  by  Consciousness,   for  that  he 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS.  167 

regards  as  undenied  and  undeniable  :  but  he  is  inces- 
santly proving  to  us  that  we  ought  to  believe  our  con- 
sciousness, a  thing  which  few,  if  any,  of  his  opponents 
denied.*     It  is  true  his  appeal  is  always  to  the  same 
argument,  but  that  he  is  never  tired  of  reiterating.     It 
is  stated  the  most  systematically  in  the  first  Dissertation 
on  Eeid,  that  "  on  the  Philosophy  of  Common  Sense." 
After  saying  that  there  are  certain  primary  elements  of 
cognition,  manifesting  themselves  to  us  as  facts  of  which 
consciousness   assures  us,   he  continues,!    "  How,  it   is 
"  asked,  do  these  primary  propositions — these  cognitions 
"  at  first  hand — these  fundamental  facts,  feelings,  beliefs, 
"  certify  us  of  their  own   veracity?     To  this  the  only 
"  possible  answer  is,  that  as  elements  of  our  mental  con- 
"  stitution — as  the  essential  conditions  of  our  knowledge, 
"  they  must  by  us  be  accepted  as  true.     To  suppose  their 
"  falsehood,  is  to  suppose  that  we  are  created  capable  of 
"  intelligence,  in  order  to  be  made  the  victims  of  delu- 
"  sion  ;  that  God.   is  a  deceiver,    and  the   root  of  our 
"  nature  a  lie  :"  that  man  is  "  organized  +  for  the  attain- 
"  ment,   and  actuated  by  the  love  of  truth,  only  to  be- 
"  come  the  dupe  and  victim  of  a  perfidious  creator."     It  | 
appears,  therefore,  that  the  testimony  of  consciousness  ' 
must  be  believed,  because  to  disbelieve  it,  would  be  to  \ 
impute  mendacity  and  perfidy  to  the  Creator. 

But  there  is  a  preliminary  difficulty  to  be  here  re- 
solved, which  may  be  stated  without  irreverence.  If  ' 
the  proof  of  the  trustworthiness  of  consciousness  is  the 
veracity  of  the  Creator,  on  what  does  the  Creator's 
veracity  itself  rest  ?  Is  it  not  on  the  evidence  of  con- 
sciousness? The  divine  veracity  can  only  be  known  in 
two  ways,  1st,  by  intuition,  or  2ndly,  through  evidence. 
If  it  is  known  by  intuition,  it  is  itself  a  fact  of  conscious-  . 

*  The  philosophers  who  have  most  insisted  on  the  necessity  of  a  test 
for  consciousness,  have  always  found  that  test  in  consciousness  itself. 
Hear  Mr.  Stirling,  the  latest  of  them,  who  in  this  respect  represents  them 
all :  "  It  is  the  function  of  consciousness,  though  itself  infallible,  invio- 
lable, and  veracious  as  nothing  else  is  or  can  be,  to  test  and  try  and 
question  consciousness  to  the  uttermost"  (p.  58). 

t  Dissertations  on  Eeid,  p.  743.  X  I^i^-  P-  ^46. 


168  THE    INTERPRETATION    OF   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

ness,  and  to  have  ground  for  believing  it,  we  must  assume 
that  consciousness  is  trustworthy.  Those  who  say  that 
we  have  a  direct  intuition  of  Grod,  are  only  saying  in 
other  words  that  consciousness  testifies  to  him.  If  we 
hold,  on  the  contrary,  with  our  author,  that  God  is  not 
known  by  intuition,  but  proved  by  evidence,  that  evi- 
ll  dence  must  rest,  in  the  last  resort,  on  consciousness. 
All  proofs  of  religion,  natural  or  revealed,  must  be  de- 
rived either  from  the  testimony  of  the  senses,  or  from 
internal  feelings  of  the  mind,  or  from  reasonings  of 
which  one  or  other  of  these,  sources  supplied  the  pre- 
mises. Religion,  thus  itself  resting  on  the  evidence  of 
consciousness,  cannot  be  invoked  to  prove  that  conscious- 
ness ought  to  be  believed.  We  must  already  trust  our 
consciousness,  before  we  can  have  any  evidence  of  the 
truth  of  religion. 

I  know  not  whether  it  is  from  an  obscure  sense  of 
this  objection  to  his  argument,  that  Sir  W..  Hamilton 
adopts  what,  in  every  other  point  of  view,  is  a  very 
extraordinary  limitation  of  it.  After  representing  the 
veracity  of  the  Creator  as  staked  on  the  truth  of  the 
testimony  of  Consciousness,  he  is  content  to  claim  this 
argument  as  not  amounting  to  proof,  but  only  to  a 
prima  facie  presumption.  "  Such*  a  supposition"  as  that 
of  a  perfidious  creator,  "  if  gratuitous,  is  manifestly  ille- 
gitimate." "  The  data  of  our  original  consciousness 
must,  it  is  evident,  in  the  jirst  instance'  (the  italics  are 
the  author's),  "  be  presumed  true.  It  is  only  if  proved 
false,"  which  it  can  only  be  by  showing  them  to  be  in- 
consistent with  one  another,  "  that  their  authority  can, 
"  in  consequence  of  thai  proof,  be,  in  the  second  instance, 
"  disallowed."  "Neganti  incumbit  probatio.  Nature 
"  is  not  gratuitously  to  be  assumed  to  work,  not  only 
"  in  vain,  but  in  counteraction  of  herself;  our  faculty  of 
"  knowledge  is  not,  without  a  ground,  to  be  supposed 
"  an  instrument  of  illusion."  It  is  making  a  very 
humble  claim  for  the  veracity  of  the  Creator,  that  it 
should  be  held  valid  merely  as  a  presumption,  in  the 

*  Dissertatioiis  on  Reid,  pp.  743-74i>. 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOrSNESS.  169 

absence  of  contrary  evidence  ;  that-  the  Divine  Being, 
like  a  prisoner  at  the  bar,  should  be  presumed  innocent 
until  proved  guilty.  Far,  however,  from  intending  this 
remark  in  any  invidious  sense  against  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
I  regard  it  as  one  of  his  titles  to  honour,  that  he  has  not 
been  afraid,  as  many  men  would  have  been,  to  subject  a 
proposition  surrounded  by  reverence  to  the  same  logical 
treatment  as  any  other  statement,  and  has  not  felt  him- 
self obliged,  as  a  philosopher,  to  consider  it  from  the 
first  as  final.  My  complaint  could  only  be,  that  his  logic 
is  not  sufficiently  consistent;  and  that  the  divine  veracity 
is  entitled  either  to  more  or  to  less  weight  than  he  accords 
to  it.  He  is  bound  by  the  laws  of  correct  reasoning  to 
prove  his  premise  without  the  aid  of  the  conclusion 
which  he  means  to  draw  from  it.  If  he  can  do  this — 
if  the  divine  veracity  is  certified  by  stronger  evidence 
than  the  testimony  of  consciousness,  it  may  be  appealed 
to,  not  merely  as  a  presumption,  but  as  a  proof  If  not, 
it  is  entitled  to  no  place  in  the  discussion,  even  as  a 
presumption.  There  is  no  intermediate  position  for  it, 
good  enough  for  the  one  purpose,  but  not  good  enough 
lor  the  other.  It  would  be  a  new  view  of  the  fallacy  of 
petitio  principii  to  contend  that  a  conclusion  is  no  'proof 
of  the  premises  from  which  it  is  deduced,  but  is  prima 
facie  evidence  of  them. 

Our  author,  however,  cannot  be  convicted  of  petitio 
principii.  Though  he  has  not  stated,  I  think  he  has 
enabled  us  to  see,  in  what  manner  he  avoided  it.  True, 
he  has  deduced  the  trustworthiness  of  consciousness 
from  the  veracity  of  the  Deity ;  and  the  veracity  of  the 
Deity  can  only  be  known  from  the  evidence  of  con- 
sciousness. But  he  may  fail  back  upon  the  distinction 
between  facts  given  in  consciousness  itself,  and  facts  "  to 
the  reality  of  which  it  only  bears  evidence."  It  is  for 
the  trustworthiness  of  these  last,  that  he  assigns  as  pre- 
sumptive evidence  (which  the  absence  of  counter-evidence 
raises  into  proof)  the  divine  veracity.  That  veracity  itself, 
he  may  say,  is  proved  by  consciousness,  but  to  prove  it 
re(juires  only  the  other  class  of  facts  of  consciousness. 


170  THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS. 

those  ^iven  in  the  act  of  consciousness  itself.  There 
are  thus  two  steps  in  the  argument.  "  The  phsenomena 
of  consciousness  considered  merely  in  themselves,"  with 
reference  to  which  "  scepticism  is  confessedly  impos- 
sible,"* suffice  (we  must  suppose  him  to  think)  for 
proving  the  divine  veracity ;  and  that  veracity,  being 
proved,  is  in  its  turn  a  reason  for  trusting  the  testimony 
which  consciousness  pronounces  to  facts  without  and 
beyond  itself. 

Unless,  therefore,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  was  guilty  of  a 
paralogism,  by  adducing  religion  in  proof  of  what  is  ne- 
cessary to  the  proof  of  religion,  his  opinion  must  have 
been  that  our  knowledge  of  God  rests  upon  the  affirma- 
tion which  Consciousness  makes  of  itself,  and  not  of" 
anything  beyond  itself;  that  the  divine  existence  and 
attributes  may  be  proved  without  assuming  that  con- 
sciousness testifies  to  anything  but  our  own  feelings 
and  mental  operations.  If  this  be  so,  we  have  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  authority  for  affirming,  that  even  the  most 
extreme  form  of  philosophical  scepticism,  the  Nihilism 
(as  our  author  calls  it)  of  Hume,  which  denies  the  ob- 
jective existence  of  both  Matter  and  Mind,  does  not 
touch  the  evidences  of  Natural  Rehgion.  And  it  really 
does  not  touch  any  evidences  but  such,  as  religion  can 
well  spare.  But  what  a  mass  of  religious  prejudice  has 
been  directed  against  this  philosophical  doctrine,  on  the 
strength  of  what  we  have  now  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  au- 
thority for  treating  as  a  mere  misapprehension.! 

But  something  more  is  necessary  to  render  the  divine 
veracity  available  in  support  of  the  testimony  of  con- 
sciousness, against  those,  if  such  there  be,  who  admit 
the   fact  of   the    testimony,  but  hesitate   to    admit   its 

*  Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  745. 
f  Accordingly  Sir  W.  Hamilton  says  elsewhere  (Appendix  to  Lectures, 
i.  394)  :  "  Religious  disbelief  and  philosophical  scepticism  are  not  merely 
not  the  same,  but  have  no  natural  connexion."  I  regret  that  this  state- 
ment is  followed  by  a  declaration  that  the  former  "  must  ever  be  a  matter" 
not  merely  "of  regret,"  but  of  "  reprobation."  This  imputation  of  moral 
lilame  to  an  opinion  sincerely  entertained  and  honestly  arrived  at,  is  a 
blot  which  one  would  willingly  not  have  found  in  a  thinker  of  so  much 
ability,  and  in  general  of  so  high  a  moral  tone. 


THE   INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS.  171 

truth.  The  divine  veracity  can  only  be  implicated  in 
the_trath"orany thing,  by  proving  that  the  Divine  Being 
intended  it  to  be  believed.  As  it  is  not  pretended  that 
he  has  made  any  revelation  in  the  matter,  his  intention 
can  only  be  interred  from  the  result :  and  our  author" 
draws  the  inference  from  his  having  made  it  an  original 
and  indestructible  part  of  our  nature  that  our  conscious- 
ness should  declare  to  us  certain  facts.  Now  this  is 
what  the  philosophers  who  disbelieve  the  facts,  would 
not,  any  of  them,  admit.  Many  indeed  have  admitted  i 
that  we  have  a  natural  tendency  to  believe  something 
which  they  considered  to  be  an  illusion  :  but  it  cannot 
be  affirmed  that  God  intended  us  to  do  whatever  we  have 
a  natural  tendency  to.  On  every  theory  of  the  divine 
government,  it  is  carried  on,  intellectually  as  well  as 
morally,  not  by  the  mere  indulgence  of  our  natural  ten- 
dencies, but  by  the  regulation  and  control  of  them.  One 
philosopher,  Hume,  has  said  that  the  tendency  in  ques- 
tion seems  to  be  an  "instinct,"  and  has  called  a  psycho- 
logical doctrine,  which  he  regarded  as  groundless,  an  vii^ 
"  universal  and  primary  opinion  of  all  men."  But  hel'^f^t^,^)'^ 
never  dreamed  of  saying  that  we  are  compelled  by  our 
nature  to  believe  it ;  on  the  contrary,  he  says  that  this 
illusive  opinion  "is  soon  destroyed  by  the  slightest ^  . 
philosophy."  Of  all  eminent  thinkers,  the  one  who  ^^^ 
comes  nearest  to  our  author's  description  of  those  who  S.-^^^' 
reject  the  testimony  of  consciousness,  is  Kant.  That 
philosopher  did  maintain  that  there  is  an  illusion  in- 
herent in  our  constitution;  that  we  cannot  help  con- 
ceiving as  belonging  to  Things  themselves,  attributes 
with  which  they  are  only  clothed  by  the  laws  of  our 
sensitive  and  intellectual  faculties.  But  he  drew  a 
marked  distinction  between  an  illusion  and  a  delusion. 
He  did  not  believe  in  a  mystification  practised  on  us  by 
the  Supreme  Being,  nor  would  he  have  admitted  that 
God  intended  us  permanently  to  mistake  the  conditions 
of  our  mental  conceptions  for  properties  of  the  things 
themselves.  If  God  has  provided  us  with  the  means  of 
correcting   an   error,   it   is  probable   that   he  does  not 


172 


THE   INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS. 


> 


intend  us  to  be  misled  by  it :  and  in"  matters  specula- 
tive as  well  as  practical,  it  surely  is  more  religious  to 
see  the  purposes  of  God  in  the  dictates  of  our  deliberate 
reason,  than  in  those  of  a  "blind  and  powerful  instinct 
of  nature." 

As  regards  almost  all,  however,  if  not  all  philosophers, 
it  may  truly  be  said,  that  the  questions  which  have 
divided  them  have  never  turned  on  the  veracity  of  con- 
sciousness. Consciousness,  in  the  sense  usually  attached 
to  it  by  philosophers, — consciousness  of  the  mind's  own 
feelings  and  operations,  cannot,  as  our  author  truly 
says,  be  disbelieved.  The  inward  fact,  the  feeling  in 
our  own  minds,  was  never  doubted,  since  to  do  so 
would  be  to  doubt  that  we  feel  what  we  feel.  What 
our  author  calls  the  testimony  of  consciousness  to  some- 
thing beyond  itself,  may  be,  and  is,  denied ;  but  what 
is  denied,  has  almost  always  been  that  consciousness 
gives  the  testimony ;  not  that,  if  given,  it  must  be 
believed. 

At  first  sight  it  might  seem  as  if  there  could  not  pos- 
sibly be  any  doubt  whether  our  consciousness  does  or 
does  not  affirm  any  given  thing.  Nor  can  there,  if  con- 
-  v^^vsciousness  means,  as  it  usually  does,  self-consciousness. 
yf^*^\5  If  consciousness  tells  me  that  I  have  a  certain  thought 
or  sensation,  I  assuredly  have  that  thought  or  sensation. . 
But  if  consciousness,  as  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  means  a 
power  which  can  tell  me  things  that  are  not  phsenomena 
ot  my  own  mind,  there  is  immediately  the  broadest 
divergence  of  opinion  as  to  what  are  the  things  to  which 
consciousness  testifies.  There  is  nothing  which  people 
do  not  think  and  say  that  they  know  by  consciousness, 
provided  they  do  not  remember  any  time  when  they  did 
not  know  or  believe  it,  and  are  not  aware  in  what  manner 
they  came  by  tiie  belief.  For  Consciousness,  in  this 
extended  sense,  is,  as  I  have  so  often  observed,  but 
another  word  for  Intuitive  Knowledge  :  and  whatever 
other  things  we  may  know  in  that  manner,  we  certainly 
do  not  know  by  intuition  what  knowledge  is  intuitive. 
It  is  a  subject  on  which  both  the  vulgar  and  the  ablest 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OF   CONSC  OUSNESS.  1  73 

thinkers  are  constantly  making  mistakes.     No  one  is 
better  aware  of  this  than  Sir  W.  Hamilton.    I  transcribe 
a  few  of  the  many  passages  in  which  he  has  acknow- 
ledged it.     "Errors"*  may  arise  by  attributing  to  "in- 
"  telligence   as   necessary  and  original  data,   what  are 
"  only  contingent  generalizations   from   experience,  and 
"  consequently,  make  no  part  of  its  complement  of  native 
"  truths."!      And   again  :J     "  Many  philosophers   have 
"  attempted  to  establish  on  the  principles  of  common 
"  sense  propositions  which  are  not  original  data  of  con- 
"  sciousness  ;  while  the  original  data  of  consciousness, 
"  from   which   their  propositions   were  derived,   and  to 
"  which  they  owed  their  whole  necessity  and  truth — these 
"  data  the  same  philosophers  were  (strange  to  say)  not 
"  disposed   to  admit."      It  fares    still  worse  with    the 
philosophers   chargeable  with  this  error,  when  Sir  W. 
Hamilton   comes  into  personal  controversy   with  them. 
M.  Cousin's  mode  of  proceeding,  for  example,  he  charac- 
terizes thus:^  "Assertion  is  substituted  for  proof;  facts 
"  of  consciousness  are  alleged,  which  consciousness  never 
"  knew ;  and  paradoxes  that  baffle  argument,  are  pro- 
"  mulgated  as  intuitive  truths,  above  the  necessity  of 
"  confirmation."     M.  Cousin  s    particular  misinterpreta- 
tion of  consciousness  was,  as  we  saw,  that  of  supposing 
that  each  of  its   acts  testifies  to  three  things,  of  which 
three  Sir  W.  Hamilton  thinks  that  it  testifies  only  to 
one.    Besides  the  finite  element,  consisting  of  a  Self  and 
a  Not-self,  M.  Cou^in   believes  that  there  are  directly 
revealed  in  Consciousness  an  Infinite  ((iod)  and  a  rela- 
tion between  this  Infinite  and  the  Finite.     But  it  is  not 
only  M.  Cousin  who,  in  our  author's   opinion,  mistakes 
the  testimony  of  consciousness.     He  brings  the  same 
charge  against  a  thinker  with  whom  he  agrees  much 

*  Lectures,  iv.  137. 
f  There  are  writers  of  reputation  in  the  present  day,  who  maintain  in 
unqualified  terms,  that  we  know  by  intuition  the  impossibility  of  miracles. 
"  La  negation  du  miracle,"  sa,y8  M.  Nefttzer  {Uevue  Geiinanique  for 
September  1863,  p.  183),  "  n'est  pas  subordonn6e  a  I'exp^rience  ;  elle  est 
"  une  necessite  logique  et  un  fait  de  certitude  interne ;  elle  doit  ^tre  le 
"  premier  article  du  credu  de  tout  historien  et  dd  tout  penseur." 

X  Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  749.  §  Discussions,  p.  25. 


174  THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS. 

oftener  than  with  M.  Cousin ;  against  Eeid.  That 
philosopher,  as  we  have  seen,  is  of  opinion,  contrary  to 
Sir  W.  Hamilton,  that  we  have  an  immediate  knowledge 
of  things  past.  This  is  to  be  conscious  of  them  in  Sir 
"VV.  Hamilton's  sense  of  the  word,  though  not  in  Reid's. 
Pinally,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  imputes  a  similar  error,  no 
longer  to  any  particular  metaphysician,  but  to  the  world 
at  large.  He  says  that  we  do  not  see  the  sun,  but  only 
a  luminous  image,  in  immediate  contiguity  to  the  eye, 
and  that  no  two  persons  see  the  same  sun,  but  every 
person  a  different  one.  Now  it  is  assuredly  the  universal 
belief  of  mankind  that  all  of  them  see  the  same  sun,  and 
that  this  is  the  very  s^in  which  rises  and  sets,  and  which 
is  95  (or  according  to  more  recent  researches  92)  millions* 
of  miles  distant  from  the  eartli.  Nor  can  any  of  the 
appeals  of  Reid  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  from  the  sophistries 
of  metaphysicians  to  Common  Sense  and  the  universal 
sentiment  of  mankind,  be  more  emphatic  than  that  to 
which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  here  lays  himself  open  from  Reid 
and  from  the  non-metaphysical  world.* 

We  see,   therefore,  that  it  is  rou  enough  to  say  that 
something  is  testified  by  Consciousness,  and    refer    all 

*  Eeid  himself  places  the  "natural  belief"  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
rejects,  on  exactly  the  level  of  those  which  he  most  strenuously  maintains, 
saying  (Works,  Hamilton's  edition,  p.  284)  in  a  passage  which  our  author 
himself  quotes,  "  The  vulgar  are  firmly  persuaded  that  the  very  identical 
"  objects  which  they  perceive  continue  to  exist  when  they  do  not  perceive 
"  them  :  and  are  no  less  firmly  persuaded  that  when  ten  men  look  at  the 
"  sun  or  the  moon,  they  all  see  the  same  individual  object."  And  Reid 
avows  that  he  agrees  with  the  vulgar  in  both  opinions.  But  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  while  he  upholds  the  former  of  these  as  one  to  deny  which 
would  be  to  declare  our  nature  a  lie,  thinks  that  nothing  can  be  more 
absurd  than  the  latter  of  them.  "  Nothing,"  he  says  (Lectures,  ii.  129), 
"  can  be  conceived  more  ridiculous  than  the  opinion  of  philosophers  in 
*'  regard  to  this.  For  example,  it  has  been  curiously  held  (and  Reid  is  no 
"  exception)  that  in  looking  at  the  sun,  moon,  or  any  other  object  of  sight, 
"  we  are,  on  the  one  doctrine,  actually  conscious  of  these  distant  objects, 
"  or,  on  the  other,  that  these  distant  objects  are  those  really  represented 
*'  in  the  mind.  Nothing  can  be  more  absurd :  we  perceive,  through  no 
"  sense,  aught  external  but  what  is  in  immediate  relation  and  in  immediate 
"  contact  with  its  organ.  .  .  .  Through  the  eye  we  perceive  nothing  but 
"  the  rays  of  Ught  in  relation  to,  and  in  contact  with,  the  retina." 

The  basis  of  the  whole  Ideal  System,  which  it  is  thought  to  be  the  great 
merit  of  Reid  to  have  exploded,  was  a  natural  prejudice,  supposed  to  be 
intuitively  evident,  namely,  that  that  which  knows,  must  be  of  a  similar 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS.  175 

dissentients  to  consciousness  to  prove  it.  Substitute  for 
Consciousness  the  equivalent  phrase  (in  our  author's 
acceptation  at  least)  Intuitive  Knowledo:e,  and  it  is  seen 
that  this  is  not  a  thin^  which  can  be  proved  by  mere 
introspection  of  ourselves.  Introspection  can  show  us 
a  present  belief  or  conviction,  attended  with  a  greater 
or  a  less  difficulty  in  accommodating  the  thoughts  to  a 
different  view  of  the  subject :  but  that  this  belief,  or 
conviction,  or  knowledge,  if  we  call  it  so,  is  intuitive,  no 
mere  introspection  can  ever  show ;  unless  we  are  at 
liberty  to  assume  that  every  mental  process  which  is  now 
as  unhesitating  and  as  rapid  as  intuition,  was  intuitive 
at  its  outset.  Reid,  in  his  commencements  at  least,  often 
expressed  himself  as  if  he  believed  this  to  be  the  case : 
Sir  W.  Hamilton,  wiser  than  iieid,  knew  better.  With 
him  (at  least  in  his  better  moments)  the  question,  what 
is  and  is  not  revealed  by  Consciousness,  is  a  question  for 
philosophers.  "  The  first*  problem  of  philosophy "  is 
"  to  seek  out,  purify,  and  establish,  by  intellectual  analysis 
"  and  criticism,  the  elementary  feelings  or  beliefs,  in 
"  which  are  given  the  elementary  truths  of  which  all  are 
"  in  possession  :"  this  problem,  he  admits,  is  "  of  no  easy  ' 

nature  to  that  wliich  is  known  by  it.  "  This  principle,"  says  our  author 
(foot-note  to  Reid.  p.  300),  "  has,  perhaps,  exerted  a  more  extensive 
"  influence  on  speculation  than  any  other.  ...  It  would  be  easy  to  show 
"  that  the  belief,  explicit  or  implicit,  that  what  knows  and  what  is  imme- 
"  diately  known  must  be  of  an  analogous  nature,  lies  at  the  root  of  almost 
"  every  theory  of  cognition,  from  the  very  earliest  to  the  very  latest 
"  speculations.  .  .  .  And  yet  it  has  not  been  proved,  and  is  incapable  of 
"  proof, — nay,  is  contradicted  by  the  evidence  of  consciousness  itself." 

But  though  Sir  W.  Hamilton  manifests  himself  thus  thoroughly  aware 
how  wide  the  differences  of  opinion  may  be  and  are  respecting  our  intui- 
tive perceptions,  I  by  no  means  intend  to  deny  that  he  on  certain  occa- 
sions affirms  the  contrary.  In  the  fourth  volume  of  the  Lectures  (p.  95), 
he  says,  "  I  have  here  limited  the  possibility  of  error  to  Probable  Reason- 
*'  ing,  for  in  Intuition  and  Demonstration,  there  is  but  little  possibility  of 
"  important  error."  After  a  certain  amount  of  reading  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
one  is  used  to  these  contradictions.  What  he  here  asserts  to  be  so  nearly 
impossible,  that  no  account  needs  to  be  taken  of  it  in  a  classification  of 
Error,  he  is  continually  fighting  against  in  detail,  and  imputing  to  nearly 
all  philosophers.  And  when  he  says  (Lectures,  i.  2§6)  that  the  "  revela- 
tion" of  consciou.sness  is  "  naturally  clear,"  and  only  mistaken  by  philoso- 
phers because  they  resort  to  it  solely  for  confirmation  of  their  own  opinions, 
he  merely  transports  into  psychology  the  dogmatism  of  theologians. 
*  Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  753. 


< 


176 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS. 


accomplishment;"  and  the  "argument  from  common 
sense  "  is  thus  "  manifestly  dependent  on  philosophy  as 
"  an  art,  as  an  acquired  dexterity,  and  cannot,  notwith- 
"  standing  the  errors  which  they  have  so  frequently 
*'  committed,  be  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  the  philoso- 
"  phers.  Common  sense  is  like  Common  Law.  Each  may 
"  be  laid  down  as  the  general  rule  of  decision ;  but  in 
"  the  one  case  it  must  be  left  to  the  jurist,  in  the  other 
"  to  the  philosopher,  to  ascertain  what  are  the  contents 
**  of  the  rule ;  and  though  in  both  instances  the  common 
"  man  may  be  cited  as  a  witness  for  the  custom  or  the 
*'fact,  in  neither  can  he  be  allowed  to  officiate  as  advo- 
"  cate  or  as  judge." 

So  far,  good.  But  now,  it  being  conceded  that  the 
question,  what  do  we  know  intuitively,  or,  in  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  phraseology,  what  does  our  consciousness 
testify,  is  not,  as  might  be  supposed,  a  matter  of  simple 
self-examination,  but  of  science,  it  has  still  to  be  deter- 
mined in  what  manner  science  should  set  about  it.  And 
here  emerges  the  distinction  between  two  difierent  me- 
thods of  studying  the  problems  of  metaphysics,  forming 
the  radical  difference  between  the  two  great  schools  into 
which  metaphysicians  are  fundamentally  divided.  One, 
of  these  I  shall  call,  for  distinction,  the  introspective 
method ;  the  other,  the  psychological. 

The  elaborate  and  acute  criticism  on  the  philosophy 


aV      ufeF  Locke,  which  is  perhaps  the  most  striking  portion  of 


V^' 


y      vol    jjvvi^v,  wiJiuu  IS  peiiici|j&  tiic  uiu»u   ouiii^iLig  puruiuu  ui 

I^^W  ]yj  Cousin's  Lectures  on  the  History  of  Philosophy,  sets 
out  with,  a  remark  which  sums  up  the  characteristics  of 
the  two  great  schools  of  mental  philosophy,  by  a  summary 
description  of  their  methods.  M.  Cousin  observes,  that 
Locke  went  WTong  from  the  beginning,  by  placing  before 
himself,  as  the  question  to  be  first  resolved,  the  oriyin  of 
our  ideas.  This  was  commencing  at  the  wrong  end.  The 
proper  course  would  have  been  to  begin  by  determining 
what  the  ideas  now  are ;  to  ascertain  what  it  is  that 
consciousness  actually  tells  us,  postponing  till  afterwards 
the  attempt  to  frame  a  theory  concerning  the  origin  of 
any  of  the  mental  phsenomena. 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS.  177 

I  accept  the  question  as    M.  Cousin  states  it,  and  I  I 
contend,  that  no  attempt  to  determine  what  are  the  direct  ] 
revelations  of  consciousness,  can  be  successful,  or  entitled  j     ' 
to  any  regard,  unless  preceded  by  what  M.  Cousin  says 
ought  only  to  follow  it,  an  inquiry  into  the   origin    of  i 
our  acquired  ideas.     For  we  have  it  not  in  our  power  to  ; 
ascertain,  by  any  direct  process,  what  Consciousness  told  j    y 
us  at  the  time  when  its  revelations  were  in  their  pristine  '   C^ 
purity.      It  only  offers  itself  to  our  inspection  as  it  exists   ; 
now,  when    those  original  revelations  are  overlaid  and  \ 
buried  under  a  mountainous  heap  of  acquired  notions  i 
and  perceptions. 

It  seems  to  M.  Cousin  that  if  we  examine,  with  care 
and  minuteness,  our  present  states  of  consciousness,  dis- 
tinguishing and  defining  every  ingredient  which  we  find 
to  enter  into  them — every  element  that  we  seem  to  re- 
cognise as  real,  and  cannot,  by  merely  concentrating  our 
attention  upon    it,  analyse  into  anything  simpler — we 
reach  the  ultimate  and  primary  truths,  which  are  the 
sources  of  all  our  knowledge,  and  which  cannot  be  denied 
or  doubted  without  denying  or  doubting  the  evidence  of 
consciousness    itself,  that    is,  the    only  evidence  which 
there  is  for  anything.     I  maintain  this  to  be  a  misap- 
prehension of   the  conditions  imposed  on  inquirers  by 
the  difficulties  of  psychological  investigation.     To  begin  ^  ^t    yy 
the   inquiry  at   the    point    where    M.  Cousin    takes  it  -   ^ 
up,   is  in  fact    to   beg  the  question.     For  he  must  be  t  (^-  ^*^i 
aware,   if  not  of  the  fact,  at  least  of  the  belief  of  his  I   ^^  "^ 
opponents,    that   the   laws   of  the   mind — the  laws  of       J^^^J^ 
association    according    to    one    class    of   thinkers,  the  c^ 
Categories  of  the  Understanding  according  to  another   ^-  ^ 
— are    capable    of  creating,   out  of  those  data  of  con-  0^^ 

sciousness  which  are  uncontested,  purely  mental  con-  vrKji^JS^ 
ceptious,  which  become  so  identified  in  thought  with  v*^  ^ 
all  our  states  of  consciousness,  that  we  seem,  and  cannot 
but  seem,  to  receive  them  by  direct  intuition ;  and,  for 
example,  the  belief  in  Matter,  in  the  opinion  of  some  of 
these  thinkers,  is,  or  at  least  may  be,  thus  produced. 
Idealists,  and  Sceptics,  contend  that  the  belief  in  Matter 

N 


\\A/Y^i 


OAxJ 


^    \/vyvvnw>*v^ 


''"'"^rJ'    fyxn/yj-^.    v;-w»*.    v^-tA'w^A.i 


178 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OF   CONSCIOUSNESS. 


> 


is  not  an  original  fact  of  consciousness,  as  our  sensations 
are,  and  is  therefore  wanting  in  the  requisite  which,  in 
M.  Cousin's  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  opinion,  gives  to  our 
subjective  convictions  objective  authority.  Now,  be 
these  persons  right  or  wrong,  the}'-  cannot  be  refuted  in 
the  mode  in  which  M.  Cousin  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
attempt  to  do  so — by  appealing  to  Consciousness  itself. 
For  we  have  no  means  of  interrogating  consciousness 
in  the  only  circumstances  in  which  it  is  possible  for  jt 
to  give  a  trustworthy  answer.  Could  we  try  the  ex- 
periment of  the  first  consciousness  in  any  infant — its  first 
reception  of  the  impressions  which  we  call  external ; 
whatever  was  present  in  that  first  consciousness  would 
be  the  genuine  testimony  of  Consciousness,  and  would 
be  as  much  entitled  to  credit,  indeed  there  would  be  as 
little  possibility  of  discrediting  it,  as  our  sensations 
themselves.  But  we  have  no  means  of  now  ascertaining, 
by  direct  evidence,  whether  we  were  conscious  of  out- 
ward and  extended  objects  when  we  first  opened  our 
eyes  to  the  light.  That  a  belief  or  knowledge  of  such 
objects  is  in  our  consciousness  now,  whenever  we  use 
our  eyes  or  our  muscles,  is  no  reason  for  concluding  that 
it  was  there  from  the  beginning,  until  we  have  settled 
the  question  whether  it  could  possibly  have  been  brought; 
in  since.  If  any  mode  can  be  pointed  out  in  which 
within  the  compass  of  possibility  it  might  have  been 
brought  in,  the  hypothesis  must  be  examined  and  dis- 
proved before  we  are  entitled  to  conclude  that  the  con- 
viction is  an  original  deliverance  of  consciousness.  The 
proof  that  any  of  the  alleged  Universal  Beliefs,  or  Prin- 
ciples of  Common  Sense,  are  affirmations  of  conscious- 
ness, supposes  two  things  ;  that  the  beliefs  exist,  and 
that  there  are  no  means  by  which  they  could  have  been 
acquired.  The  first  is  in  most  cases  undisputed,  but  the 
second  is  a  subject  of  inquiry  which  often  taxes  the 
utmost  resources  of  psychology.  Locke  was  therefore 
right  in  believing  that  "  the  origin  of  our  ideas"  is  the 
main  stress  of  the  problem  of  mental  science,  and  the 
subject  which  must  be  first  considered  in  forming  the 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OP    CONSCIOUSNESS.  179 

theory  of  the  Mind.  Being  unable  to  examine  the  actual 
contents  of  our  consciousness  until  our  earliest,  which 
are  necessarily  our  most  firmly  knit  associations,  those 
which  are  most  intimately  interwoven  with  the  original 
data  of  consciousness,  are  fully  formed,  we  cannot  study 
the  oriofinal  elements  of  mind  in  the  facts  of  our  pre- 
sent consciousness.  Those  original  elements  can  only 
come  to  light  as  residual  phapnomena,  by  a  previous 
study  of  the  modes  of  generation  of  the  mental  facts 
which  are  confessedly  not  oriojinal ;  a  study  sufficiently 
thorough  to  enable  us  to  apply  its  results  to  the  convic- 
tions, beliefs,  or  supposed  intuitions  which  seem  to  be 
original,  and  to  determine  whether  some  of  them  may 
not  have  been  generated  in  the  same  modes,  so  early  as 
to  have  become  inseparable  from  our  consciousness  before 
the  time  to  which  memory  goes  back.  This  mode  of 
ascertaining  the  original  elements  of  mind  I  call,  for  want 
of  abetter  word,  the  psychological,  as  distinguished  from 
the  simply  introspective  mode.  It  is  the  known  and 
approved  method  of  physical  science,  adapted  to  the 
necessities  of  psychology.* 

It  might  be  supposed  from  incidental  expressions  of 
Sir  W,  Hamilton  that  he  was  alive  to  the  need  of  a 
methodical  scientific  investigation,  to  determine  what 
portion  of  our  "  natural  beliefs"  are  really  original,  and 

*  The  "  Inquirer"  thinks  he  refutes  the  preceding  paragraph  wlien  he 
says  (pp.  52,  63)  that  Consciousness  may  not  have  given  its  full  revelation 
in  the  infant,  and  that  it  would  be  "contrary  to  ail  analogy"  to  svippose 
"  that  consciousness  alone,  of  all  our  natural  properties,  needs  no  develop- 
ment, no  education."  If  tliis  supposed  improvement  of  consciousness 
by  exercise  be  admitted,  it  goes  even  harder  with  the  Introspective  Method 
than  I  had  maintained.  I  pointed  out  an  experiment  not  realizable,  but 
conceivable,  which  by  ascertaining  the  contents  of  consciousness  ante- 
cedently to  any  acquired  experience,  would  authenticate  as  the  original 
data  of  consciousness  whatever  that  experiment  revealed.  But  if  con- 
sciousness does  not  tell  its  tale  at  once,  but  requires  time  and  practice  to 
tell  it,  and  does  not  get  it  completed  until  there  has  bean  time  for  impres- 
sions originating  in  experience  to  be  formed,  then  there  is  no  period  at 
which  the  Introspective  Method,  applied  to  the  case,  would  yield  a  con- 
clusive result :  the  natural  and  acquired  testimonies  of  consciousness  are 
inseparably  blended  at  every  stage,  and  to  separate  them  by  mere  self- 
observation,  and  show  that  any  particular  item  belongs  to  the  one  and 
not  to  the  other,  involves  a  double  impossibility,  instead  of  the  single  ons 
I  contended  for. 

N    2 


f  Oc/v^"^' 


ISO  THE   INTEHPRKTATTON    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS. 

what  are  inferences,  or  acquired  impressions,  mistakenly 
deemed  intuitive.*  To  the  declarations  already  quoted 
to  this  effect,  the  following  may  be  added.  Speaking  of 
Descartes'  plan,  of  commencing  philosophy  by  a  recon- 
sideration of  all  our  fundamental  opinions,  he  says, 
"  There  are  among  our  prejudices,  or  pretended  cog- 
'"  nitions,  a  great  many  hasty  conclusions,  the  investi- 
"  gation    of    which   requires    much    profound    thought, 

"  skill,  and  acquired  knowledge To  commence 

"  philosophy  by  such  a  review,  it  is  necessary  for  a  man 
"  to  be  a  philosopher  before  he  can  attempt  to  become 
"  one."  And  he  elsewheref  bestows  high  praise  upon 
\t  Aristotle  for  not  falling  "  into  the  error  of  many  modern 
"  philosophers,  in  confounding  the  natural  and  necessary 
'*  with  the  habitual  and  acquired  connexions  of  thought," 
nor  attempting  "  to  evolve  the  conditions  under  which 
I  we  think  from  the  tendencies  generated  by  thinking ;" 
If  a  praise  which  cannot  be  bestowed  on  our  author  him- 
self. But,  notwithstanding  the  ample  concession  which 
he  appeared  to  make  when  he  admitted  that  the  problem 
was  one  of  extreme  difficulty,  essentially  scientific,  and 
ought  to  be  reserved  for  philosophers,  I  regret  to  say 
that  he  as  completely  sets  at  naught  the  only  possible 
method  of  solving  it,  as  M.  Cousin  himself.  He  even 
expresses  his  contempt  for  that  method.  Speaking  of 
Extension,  he  says,  J  "  It  is  truly  an  idle  problem  to 
"  attempt  imagining  the  steps  by  which  we  may  be  sup- 
"  posed  to  have  acquired  the  notion  of  Extension,  when 
"  in  fact,  we  are  unable  to  imagine  to  ourselves  the  possi- 
"  bility  of  that  notion  not  being  always  in  our  posses- 
"  sion."  That  things  which  we  "  are  unable  to  imagine 
to  ourselves  the  possibility  of,"  may  be,  and  many  of 
them  must  be,  true,  was  a  doctrine  which  we  thought 
we  had  learnt  from  the  author  of  the  Philosophy  of  the 
Conditioned.  That  we  (jannot  imagine  a  time  at  which 
we  had  no  knowledge  of  Extension,  is  no  evidence  that 
there  has  not  been  such  a  time.     There  are  mental  laws, 

*  lioctures,  iv.  92.  t  Dissertations  on  Eeid,  p.  894. 

X  Ibid.  p.  882. 


THE  INTEHPRETATION    OF   CONSClOtJSNUSS.  l8l 

recognised  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  himself^  which  would 
inevitably  cause  such  a  state  of  things  to  become  incon- 
ceivable to  us,  even  if  it  once  existed.  There  are  artificial 
inconceivabilities  equal  in  strength  to  any  natural.  In- 
deed it  is  questionable  if  there  are  any  natural  incon- 
ceivabilities, or  ifanything  is  inconceivable  to  us  tor  anj 
other  reason  than  because  Nature  does  not  afford  the 
combinations  in  experience  which  are  necessary  to  make 
it  conceivable. 

I  do  not  think  that  there  can  be  found,  in  all  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  writings,  a  single .  instance  in  which,  before 
registering  a  belief  as  a  part  of  our  consciousness  from  the 
beginning,  he  thinks  it  necessary  to  ascertain  that  it  can- 
not have  grown  up  subsequently.  He  demands,  indeed,* 
^"that  no  fact  be  assumed  as  a  fact  of  consciousness  but 
what  is  ultimate  and  simple."  But  to  pronounce  it 
ultimate,  the  only  condition  he  requires  is  that  we  be  not 
able  to  "  reduce  it  to  a  generalization  I'rom  experience." 
This  condition  is  realized  by  its  possessing  the  "  character 
*'  of  necessity."  "  It  must  be  impossible  not  to  think  it. 
"  In  fact,  by  its  necessity  alone  can  we  recognise  it  as  an 
*'  original  datum  of  intelligence,  and  distinguish  it  from 
"  any  mere  result  of  generalization  and  custom."  In 
this  Sir  VV.  Hamilton  is  at  one  with  the  whole  of  his 
own  section  of  the  philosophical  world ;  with  Eeid,  with 
Stewart,  with  Cousin,  with  Whewell,  and  we  may  add, 
with  Kant.f     The  test  by  which  they  all  decide  a  belief 

*  Lectures,  i.  268-270. 

t  In  the  first  edition  I  added,^  "and  even  with  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer:" 
but  that  powerM  thinker,  in  his  paper  in  the  Fwtnightly  Review,  dis- 
claima  the  doctrine.  As  I  now  understand  Mr.  Spencer,  he  maintains 
that  the  impossibility  of  getting  rid  of  a  belief  is  a  proof  of  its  truth,  and 
also  of  its  being  a  primary,  or  ultimate,  truth,  but  not  of  its  being  intui- 
tive, since  even  our  primary  forms  of  thought  are,  in  Mr.  Spencer's  opinion, 
products  of  experience,  either  our  own,  or  inherited  by  us  from  ancestors 
by  the  laws  of  the  development  of  organization.  I  had  confounded  the 
two  ideas,  of  a  primary  truth  and  an  intuitive  truth,  which  had  never,  as 
far  as  1  know,  been  distinguished  by  any  one  except  Mr.  Spencer ;  and 
had,  therefore,  ideatified  his  theory  with  the  ordinary  doctrine  of  the 
intuitive  phdosophy ;  which  1  now  see  to  be  a  misconception,  though  I 
think  both  theories  open  to  refutation  by  the  same  arguments,  and  the 
difference  between  them  not  material  to  the  test  of  truth,  though  highly 
important  to  psychology,  . 

i  perceive  also  that  i  was  mistaken,  when,  in  an  early  chapter  of  this- 


182  ^THE   INTERPRETATION   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS. 


^x' 


to  be  part  of  our  primitive  consciousness — an  original 
intuition  of  the  mind — is  the  necessity  of  thinking  it. 
Their  proof  that  we  must  always,  from  the  beginning, 
have  had  the  beHef,  is  the  impossibihty  of  getting  rid 
of  it  now.  This  argument,  applied  to  any  of  the  dis- 
puted questions  of  philosophy,  is  doubly  illegitimate  : 
^  neither  the  major  nor  the  minor  premise  is  admissible. 

For,  in  the  first  place,  the  very  fact  that  the  questions 
are  disputed,  disproves  the  alleged  impossibility.  Those 
against  whose  dissent  it  is  needful  to  defend  the  belief 
which  is  affirmed  to  be  necessary,  are  unmistakeable 
examples  that  it  is  not  necessary.    It  may  be  a  necessary 

work  (chap,  ii.)  I  classed  Mr.  Spencer  among  the  philosophers  who  hold, 
in  its  widest  sense,  the  doctrine  of  the  Eelativity  of  human  knowledge  : 
for  the  external  things  which,  he  contends,  we  cannot  help  believing  to  be 
connected  with  all  our  sensations,  are  not,  according  to  him,  entirely  un- 
cognizable  by  us.  On  the  contrary,  he  believes  (p.  548)  that  "  the  more  or 
"  less  coherent  relations  among"  one's  "  states  of  consciousness,  are  gene- 
"  rated  by  experience  of  the  more  or  less  constant  relations  in  something 
"  beyond  his  consciousness  :"  i.e.,  that  for  every  proposition  which  we  can 
truly  assert  about  the  similitudes,  successions,  and  coexistences  of  our 
states  of  consciousness,  there  is  a  corresponding  similitude,  succession,  or 
coexistence  really  obtaining  among  Noumena  beyond  our  consciousness, 
and  even  that  we  can  have  "  experience  "  of  the  same.  This  prodigious 
amount  of  knowledge  respecting  the  "  Unknowable "  is  only  consistent 
with  the  doctrine  of  Relativity  if  we  understand  that  doctrine  in  the  very 
limited  sense  in  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  holds  it.  This  abates  nothing 
from  the  value  of  the  psychological  analyses  due  to  Mr.  Spencer,  whose 
services  to  philosophy  as  an  applier  and  defender  of  the  "  experience 
hypothesis"  are  beyond  all  price. 

Mr.  Spencer,  in  the  same  paper,  adheres  to  his  doctrine  that  the  test  of 
truth  in  the  last  resort  is  the  inconceivability  of  its  negation,  and  main- 
tains that  doctrine  with  his  usual  argumentative  power.  In  one  part  of 
his  argument,  he  seems  to  put  a  sense  upon  it  which  would  leave  little,  if 
any,  difference  between  his  opinion  and  my  own.  He  seems  to  say  (p.  639) 
that  the  proposition.  Things  equal  to  the  same  thing  are  equal  to  one 
another,  is  known  to  be  true  by  the  inconceivability  of  its  negation,  in  the 
same  manner  in  which  it  might  be  said  that  two  unequal  lines  placed  side 
by  side  are  known  to  be  unequal  by  the  inconceivability  of  their  being  equal, 
i.e.,  "  I  find  it  impossible,  while  contemplating  the  lines,  to  get  rid  of  the 
consciousness"  of  their  inequality.  If  the  inconceivableness  of  the  nega- 
tive only  means  that  I  cannot  resist  the  evidence  of  my  senses  for  the 
affirmative,  I  have  no  objection  to  admit  this  as  the  test  of  any  truth, 
even  a  geometrical  axiom.  I  believe  that  my  knowledge  of  the  axiom  is  of 
exactly  the  same  kind  as  my  knowledge  of  the  inequality  of  the  two  lines : 
I  know  it  because  I  see  it ;  and  as  I  cannot  have  this  positive  intuition 
together  with  its  negative,  this  may  be  called,  if  any  one  pleases,  the 
inconceivability  of  the  negative.  But  I  do  not  therefore  rest  the  belief 
that  things  equal  to  the  same  thing  are  equal  to  one  another  on  an 
a  priori  incapacity  of  my  mind  to  conceive  them  unequal.     I  believe  that 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS.  183 

belief  to  those  who  think  it  so  ;  they  may  personally  be 
quite  incapable  of  not  holding  it.     But  even  if  this  in- 
capability extended  to  all  mankind,  it  might  be  merely 
the  effect  of  a  strong  association ;  like  the  impossibility 
of  believing  Antipodes  ;  and  it  cannot  be  shown  that  even 
where   the  impossibility  is,  for  the  time,  real,  it  might 
not,  as  in  that  case,  be  overcome.    The  history  of  science  | 
teems  with  inconceivabilities  which  have  been  conquered,  ; 
and  supposed  necessary  truths  which  have  first  ceased  to 
be  thought  necessary,  then  to  be  thought  true,  and  have 
finally  come  to  be  deemed  impossible.*     These  philoso-  ^ 
phers,  therefore,  and   among   them    Sir    W.  Hamilton,} 

I  am  only  unable  to  conceive  tliem  unequal  because  I  have  always  seen  I 
them  to  be  equal,  and  am  renewing  that  experience  at  almost  every  instant  | 
of  my  life. 

Mr.  Spencer  asks  (p.  649),  If  an  axiom  of  mathematics  is  said  to  be 
known  "  only  by  induction  from  personal  experiences,"  on  what  warrant 
"  are  personal  experiences  asserted  ?  The  testimony  of  experience  is  given 
•'  only  through  memory,"  and  "the  trustworthiness  of  memory"  is  open  to 
more  doubt  than  the  "  immediate  consciousness"  of  the  mathematical 
truth.  Instead,  however,  of  immediate  consciousness,  let  us  call  it  imme- 
diate observation,  which  is  a  mode  of  consciousness,  and  the  "  personal 
experiences"  which  it  yields  become  the  most  certain  evidence  which  is 
is  possible  to  have  :  not  depending  upon  memory,  but  upon  direct  percep- 
tion, which  can  be  repeated  at  any  moment  ;  corroborated,  however,  by  a 
vast  mass  of  memories,  both  of  our  own  and  of  other  people,  which  by 
their  number, ubiquity,  and  variety  operate  as  a  complete  insurance  against 
the  possible  error  of  memory  in  any  single  instance.  '  ■ 

*  Mr.  Mahaffy,  after  distinguishing  as  I  have  done,  between  the  two  V' 
kinds   of   so-called   inconceivables,    the  Unimaginable    and    the   simply         ^  ""' 
Incredible,  says  (pp.  viii.  ix.),  "  There  seems  to  be  a  definite  distinction    |\.'«        jj 
"  between  them,  not  of  degree,  but  of  kind.     We  may  safely  defy  Mr.  Mill    ^    f/^ 
"  to  point  out  a  case  where  an  unimaginable  (inconceivable)  was  proved     ^V 
"true,  or  even  possible.     And  the  reason  is  plain.     The  latter  depends        .  ^  ^^ 
"  upon  the  form  of  the  thinking  or  intuiting  faculty;  the  former,  merely  '   A 

"  upon  empirical  association,"     In   Mr.  Mahalfy's  philosophical  system         ^v    '< 
the   distinction  passes  for  one  of  kind,  but  he  must    surely  see   that   it    ''^      \^ 
admits  of  being  construed  as  a  diiference  only  of  degree.     If  an  empirical        w-^ 
association  between  two  ideas,  not  so  strong  as  to  be  altogether  irresistible.  Vv  "    »» 
makes  it  difficult  to  image  in  our  own  ramds  the  corresponding  facts  as      <    f    V 
disjoined,  it  is  but  rational  to  believe  that  a  stronger  empirical  association, 
produced  by  still  more  incessant  repetition,  will  convert  that  difficulty 
into  a  conditional  impossibility;  an  inability  only  to  be  overcome  by  con- 
trary  experience,  which  experience  the  conditions  of  our  terrestial  exis- 
tence may  not  permit.     And  if,  as  I  have  before  observed,    "  a  mental 
"  association  between  two  facts,  which  is   not  intense  enough  to  make     , 
"  their  separation  unimaginable,   may  yet  create,   and   if  there   are  no 
"  counter-associations,  always  does  create,   more  or  less  of  difficulty  in 
"  believing  that  the  two  can  exist  apart ;  a  difficulty  often  amounting  to 
"  a  local  or  temporary  impossibility  ;"  an  association  which  is  so  intense 


184  THE    INTERPRETATION    OF   CONSCIOUSNESS. 

I  mistake  altogether  the  true  conditions  of  psychological 
j  investigation,  when,  instead  of  proving  a  belief  to  be  an 
"  ,V  i'  original  fact  of  consciousness  by  showing  that  it  cannot, 
'Jr^*^  by  any  known  means,  have  been  acquired,  they  conclude 
|!  that  it  was  not  acquired,  for  the  reason,  often  false,  and 
I  never  sufficiently  substantiated,  that  our  consciousness 
I    cannot  get  rid  of  it  now. 

Since,  then,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  not  only  neglects,  but 
repudiates,  the  only  scientific  mode  of  ascertaining  our 
original  beliefs,  what  does  he  mean  by  treating  the 
question  as  one  of  science,  and  in  what  manner  does 
he  apply  science  to  it  ?  Theoretically,  he  claims  for 
science  an  exclusive  jurisdiction  over  the  whole  domain, 
but  practically  he  gives  it  nothing  to  do  except  to  settle 

as  to  make  the  separation  unimaginable,  may  surely  create  an  impossibility 
of  belief,  not  local  or  temporary,  but  as  durable  as  the  experience  which 
gave  rise  to  the  association. 

Mr.  Spencer,  who  is  almost  willing  to  rest  the  claims  of  inconceivability 
as  a  test  of  truth  on  its  expressing  "  the  net  result  of  our  experience  up 
to  the  present  time,"  has  given  an  excellent  exposition  of  this  point.  He 
sees  clearly  that  the  difference  between  the  two  kinds  of  inconceivable  is 
oiily  one  of  degree — the  degree  of  strength  of  the  cohesion  between  the 
two  ideas.  The  proposition  "  the  ice  was  hot"  he  justly  classes  as  not 
unimaginable,  but  merely  unbelievable  ;  the  unbelievableness,  however, 
arising  from  a  difficulty,  though  not  amounting  to  an  impossibility,  of 
combining  the  two  ideas  in  a  representation.  "  The  elements  of  the  pro- 
"  position  cannot  be  put  together  in  thought  without  great  resistance. 
"  Between  those  other  states  of  consciousness  which  the  word  ice  connotes, 
"  and  the  state  of  consciousness  named  cold,  there  is  an  extremely  strong 
"  cohesion — a  cohesion  measured  by  the  resistance  to  be  overcome  in 
"  thinking  of  the  ice  as  hot."  (Spencer,  p.  54;}).  The  merely  unbelievable 
is  thus  distinguished  from  Mr.  Mahaffy's  unimaginable,  not  by  a  generic 
difference,  but  by  a  minor  degree  of  unimaginability.  And  the  seeming 
incredibility  is  strictly  proportioned  to  the  degree  of  difficulty  in  com- 
bining the  two  thoughts  in  one  representation. 

With  regard  to  Mr.  Mahaffy's  assertion,  that  nothing  unimaginable  has 
ever  been  "proved  true,  or  even  possible;"  the  point  would  have  been 
more  effectually  maintained  if  he  could  have  said  '"  nothing  which  seemed 
unimaginable  ;"  for  whatever  has  been  "  proved  true"  or  even  "  pot^sible" 
has  thereby  become  imaginable.  People  had  much  difficulty,  and  most 
people  have  some  difficulty  still,  in  representing  to  themselves  sunrise  as 
a  motion  not  of  the  sun  but  of  the  earth ;  but  no  one  ha«  called  this 
notion  of  sunrise  either  inconceivable  or  unimaginable  after  knowing  it 
to  be  the  true  notion.  Let  us  first,  then,  state  the  question  correctly  : 
Has  anything  which  seemed  unimaginable  been  proved  true,  or  possible  ? 
It  is  hardly  practicable  to  give  such  an  answer  to  this  question  as  will 
silence  the  retort,  that  what  was  called  unimaginable  was  really  no  more 
than  incredible ;  for  since  unimaginableness,  as  I   have   said,   exists   in 


THE    INTERPRETATION    OF  CONSCIOUSNESS.  185 

the  relations  of  the  supposed  intuitive  beliefs  among 
themselves.  It  is  the  province  of  science,  he  thinks,  to 
resolve  some  of  these  beliefs  into  others.  He  prescribes, 
as  a  rule  of  judgment,  what  he  calls  "the  Law  of 
Parcimony."  No  greater  number  of  ultimate  beliefs  are 
to  be  postulated  than  is  strictly  indispensable.  Where 
one  such  belief  can  be  looked  upon  as  a  particular  case 
of  another — the  belief  in  Matter,  for  instance,  of  the 
cognition  of  a  Non-ego — the  more  special  of  the  two 
necessities  of  thought  merges  in  the  more  general 
one.  This  identification  of  two  necessities  of  thought, 
and  subsumption  of  one  of  them  under  the  other,  he 
is  not  wrong  in  regarding  as  a  function  of  science. 
He  affords  an  example  of  it,  when,  in  a  manner 
which  we  shall  herealter  characterize,  he  denies  to 
Causation  the  character,  which  philosophers  of  his  school 

numerous  degrees,  graduating  from  a  slight  difficulty  to  at  least  a  tem- 
porary impossibility,  there  is  no  definite  line  of  demarcation  between  the 
absolutely  unimaginable  (if  there  be  such  a  thing)  and  the  totally  incre- 
dible, nor  even  between  what  is  unimaginable  by  a  given  person,  and  what 
is   merely  incredible  to  him.     Most  of  the  questions  which  lie   on   that    ^^o««^-^^ 
border  land  are  still  disputed.     For  example :  is  a  creation  a  nihUo,  or    ,j,ov>.  >*f"|^ 
Matter  capable  of  thinking,  unimaginable,  or  only  incredible  ?     Both  the 
one  and  the  other  are  habitually  ranked  among  the  most  unimagmable  of 
all  things.     Yet  the  one  is  firmly  believed  by  all  Materialists,  and  the 
other  by  all  Christians.     Every  Materialist,  therefore,  and  every  Christian, 
may  be  called  as  a  witness  that  things  which  are  unimaginable  are  not 
only  possible  but  true.     To  take  another  instance — an  event  without  a 
cause.     Is  that  unimaginable,  or  only  incredible  ?     All  who  regard  the 
category  of  Cause  and  Effect  as  a  necessity  of  thought,  including  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  and   Mr.  Mahaffy  himself,   maintain  it  to  be   unimaginable. 
Yet  most  of  these  believe  it  to   be  both  possible  and  true  in  the  case  oi/  V/h*^H« 
human  freewill.     Not  only  therefore  what  to  one  man  seems  unimaginable,  ^ 
another  believes  to  be  true,  but  the  same  man  believes  to  be  true  what 
to  himself  seems  unimaginable  :  witness  the  whole   Philosophy  of   the 
Conditioned. 

Dr.  M'Cosh  thinks  that  antipodes  were  unbelievable,  not  in  consequence 
of  an  association,  but  because  (p.  240)  "  the  alleged  fact  seemed  contrary 
"  to  a  law  of  nature  established  by  observation.  A  gathered  experience 
"  seemed  to  show  that  there  was  an  absolute  up  and  down,  and  that  heavy 
"  bodies  tended  downwards."  Of  course  it  was  the  apparent  experience 
that  generated  the  association.  But  ii  there  had  been  no  more  in  the 
matter  than  an  intellectual  conviction,  the  conviction  would  have  given 
way  as  soon  as  any  one  made  the  remark  that  the  experience  was  con- 
fined to  a  region  in  which  the  direction  of  down  coincided  with  direction 
towards  the  earth.  It  is  because  our  intellectual  convictions  generate 
temporarily  insejjarable  associations,  that  they  give  way  so  slowly  before 
evidence. 


186  THE    INTERPRETATION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS. 

have  comTnonly  assigned  to  it,  of  an  ultimate  belief, 
and  attempts  to  identify  it  with  another  and  more 
general  law  of  thought.  This  limited  function  is  the 
only  one  which,  it  seems  to  me,  is  reserved  for  science 
in  ii)ir  W.  Hamilton's  mode  of  studying  the  primary 
facts  of  consciousness.  In  the  mode  he  practises  of 
ascertaining  them  to  be  facts  of  consciousness,  there  is 
nothing  for  science  to  do.  For,  to  call  them  so  because 
in  his  opinion  he  himself,  and  those  who  agree  with  him, 
cannot  get  rid  of  the  belief  in  them,  does  not  seem 
exactly  a  scientific  process.*  It  is,  however,  characteristic 
of  what  I  have  called  the  introspective,  in  contradis- 
tinction to  the  psychological,  method  of  metaphysical 
inquiry.  The  difference  between  these  methods  will 
now  be  exemplified  by  showing  them  at  work  on  a 
particular  question,  the  most  fundamental  one  in  philo- 
*sophy,  the  distinction  between  the  -higo  and  the  Non-ego. 
We  shall  first  examine  what  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has 
done  by  his  method,  and  shall  afterwards  attempt  to 
exemplify  the  use  which  can  be  made  of  the  other. 

*  The  "  Inquirer"  (p.  64)  thinks  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  demanded,  as 
evidence  that  a   supposed  fact  of  consciousness  is  not  acquired,  but  ori- 
ginal, not  only  that  it  should  not  be  reducible  to  a  generalization  from 
k  experience,  but  that  it  should  lie  "  at  the  root  of  all  experience  ;"  which 
.,NJ  the  "  Inquirer"  understands  to  mean  "  that  no  experience  is  possible  unless 
j^  ^  this  belief,  this  mode  of  thought,  is  already  present  with  us."     If  Sir  W. 
„^/^     Hamilton  meant  this,  he  took  no  pains  to  show  that  he  meant  it.     The 
''il^-Xr'     authority  quoted  is  a  passing  expression  (Lectures,  i.  270) :  ''  Whenever 
"  in  an  analysis  of  the  intellectual  phenomenon,  we  arrive  at  an  element 
"  which  we  cannot  reduce  to  a  generalization  from  experience,  but  which 
"  lies  at  the  root  of  all  experience,  and  which  we  cannot,  therefore,  resolve 
"  into  any  higher  principle,  this  we  properly  call  a  fact  of  consciousness." 
The  idea  of  tbe  words  in  italics  is  no  further  developed  ;  it  is  omitted  from 
the  definition  in  the  next  page,  "  A  fact  of  consciousness  is  thus,  that 
"  whose  existence  is  given  and  guaranteed  by  an  original  and  necessary 
-»  '^      I  "  belief"  (unless  the  idea  is  supposed  to  be  implied  in  the  word  "original") ; 
'  1  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  never,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,   recurs  to  it  in  his 

attempts  to  prove  the  originality  of  a  belief.     This  is  the  more  remarkable, 
because  Kant  makes  a  continual  and  obtrusive  use  of  this  criterion  ;    we 
are  always  hearing  from  him  that  this  or  that  mental  element  cannot  be 
'    »—  the  product  of  experience,  because  its  pre-existeuce  is   required  to  render 

^1^    V'        experience  possible ;    which  goes   far  to  show    that  Sir  W.   Hamilton's 
■r    .fT  J>  abstinence   was  intentional,  and  grounded  on   a   sense  of    the   extreme 
K  difficulty  of  proving,  in  any  of  the  disputed  cases,  what  Kant  so  confidently 
affirms.     It  is  not  unusual  with  Sir  W.  Bamilton  to  adopt,  from  other 
'.^philosophers,  single   expressions  of  which  the  full  meaning  forms  no  part 
•J*  of  his  own  mode  of  thought. 


Z 

yv 


^ 


187 


CHAPTER  X. 


SIR  WILLIAM  HAMILTON  S  VIEW  OF  THE  DIFFERENT  THEORIES 
RESPECTING  THE  BELIEF  IN  AN  EXTERNAL  WORLD. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  brings  a  very  serious  charge  against 
the  great  majority  of  philosophers.      He  accuses  them  of 
playing  fast  and  loose  with  the  testimony  of  conscious- 
ness ;  rejecting  it  when  it  is  inconvenient,  but  appealing 
to  it  as  conclusive  when  they  have  need  of  it  to  establish 
any    of   their    opinions.      "No*    philosopher   has    ever^ 
openly  thrown  off  allegiance  to  the  authoritj"  of  con- 
sciousness."    No  one  denies  "  thatf  as  all  philosophy 
is  evolved  from  consciousness,  so  on  the  truth  of  con- 
sciousness, the  possibility  of  all  philosophy  is  depen- 
dent."    But  if  any  testimony  of  consciousness  be  sup- 
posed false,  "  the  J  truth  of  no  other  fact  of  consciousness 
can  be  maintained.     The  legal  brocard,  Falsus  in  uno, 
falsus  in  omnibus,  is  a  rule  not  more  applicable  to  other 
witnesses  than  to  consciousness.     Tlius   every  system 
of  philosophy  which  implies  the  negation  of  any  fact 
of  consciousness  is  not  only  necessarily  unable,  without 
self-contradiction,   to  establish  its  own  truth   by  any 
appeal  to  consciousness  ;  it  is  also  unable,  without  self- 
contradiction,  to  appeal  to  consciousness   against  the 
falsehood  of  any  other  system.     If  the  absolute  and 
universal  veracity  of  consciousness  be  once  surrendered, 
every  system  is  equally  true,  or  rather  all  are  equally 
false  ;  philosophy  is  impossible,  for  it  has  now  no  in- 
strument by  which  truth  can  be  discovered,  no  standard 
by  which  it  can  be  tried ;  the  root  of  our  nature  is  a 
lie.     But  though  it  is  thus  manifestly  the  common 
interest  of  every  scheme    of  philosophy  to   preserve 

♦  Lectures,  i.  377.  f  Ibid.  p.  285.  X  Ibid  p.  283. 


188     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  oe  theories 

"  intact  the  integrity  of  consciousness,  almost  every 
"  scheme  of  philosophy  is  only  another  mode  in  which 
"  this  integrity  has  been  violated.  If,  therefore,  I  am 
"  able  to  prove  the  fact  of  this  various  violation,  and  to 
"  show  that  the  facts  of  consciousness  have  never,  or 
"  hardly  ever,  been  fairly  evolved,  it  will  follow,  as  1 
"  said,  that  no  reproach  can  be  justly  addressed  to  con- 
"  sciousness  as  an  ill-informed,  or  Vacillating,  or  perli- 
"  dious  witness,  but  to  those  only  who  were  two  proud 
"  or  too  negligent  to  accept  its  testimony,  to  employ  its 
"  materials,  and  obey  its  lavvs."  That  nearly  all  philo- 
sophers have  merited  this  imputation,  our  author  endea- 
vours to  show  by  a  classified  enumeration  of  the  various 
theories  which  they  have  maintained  respecting  the  per- 
ception of  material  objects.  No  instance  can  be  better 
suited  for  trying  the  dispute.  The  question  of  an  ex- 
ternal world  is  the  great  battle-ground  of  metaphysics, 
not  so  much  from  its  importance  in  itself,  as  because 
while  it  relates  to  the  most  familiar  of  all  our  mental 
acts,  it  forcibly  illustrates  the  characteristic  difi'erences 
between  the  two  metaphysical  methods. 

"  We  are  immediately  conscious  in  perception,"  says 

Sir.W.   Hamilton.*  "of  an  ego  and  a  non-ego,  known 

"  together,  and  known  in  contrast  to  each  otlier.     This 

"  is  the  fact  of  the  Duality  of  Consciousness.     It  is  clear 

''  and  manifest.     When  1  concentrate  my  attention  in  the 

''  simplest  act  of  perception,  I  return  trom  my  observa- 

''  tion  with  the  most  irresistible  conviction  of  two  facts, 

''  or  rather  two  branches  of  the  same  fact ;  that  1  am, 

;  ''  and  that  something  different  from  me  exists.     In  this 

I  ''  act  I  am  conscious  of  myself  as  the  perceiving  subject, 

!   ''  and  of  an  external  reality  as  the  object  perceived  ;  and 

I  "  1  am  conscious  of  both  existences  in  the  same  indivi- 

''  sible   moment  of   intuition.     The   knowledge   of    the 

■  "  subject  does  not  precede,  nor  follow,  the  knowledge  of 

I  ''  the  object ;  neither  determines,  neither  is  determined 

I  "  by  the  other.     Such  is  the  fact  of  perception  revealed 

,|  "  in  consciousness,    and   as   it   determines  mankind   in 

*  Lectures,  i.  288-296. 


ON    THE   BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL    WORLD. 


189. 


"  general  in  their  almost  equal  assurance  of  the  reality  of 
"  an  external  world,  as  of  the  existence  of  our  own  minds.    ^~. 

"  We  may,  therefore,  lay  it  down  as  an  undisputed  ^ 
"  truth,  that  consciousness  gives,  as  an  ultimate  fact,  a 
"  primitive  quality;  a  knowlediife  of  the  ego  in  relation 
"  and  contrast  to  the  non-ego  ;  and  a  knowledge  of  the 
"  non-ego  in  relation  and  contrast  to  the  ego.  The  ego  f»' 
"  and  non-ego  are  thus  given  in  an  original  synthesis,  as 
"  conjoined  in  the  unity  of  knowledge,  and  in  an  original 
".  antithesis,  as  opposed  in  the  contrariety  of  existence. 
"  In  other  words,  we  are  conscious  of  them  in  an  indivi- 
"  sible  act  of  knowledge  together  and  at  once,  but  we 
"  are  conscious  of  them,  as,  in  themselves,  different  and 
"  exclusive  of  each  other. 

"  Again,  consciousness  not  only  gives  us  a  duality,  but 
"  it  gives  its  elements  in  equal  counterpoise  and  inde- 
"  pendence.  The  ego  and  non-ego — mind  and  matter — 
"  are  not  only  given  together,  but  in  absolute  co-equality. 
"  The  one  does  not  precede,  the  other  does  not  follow  ; 
"  and  in  their  mutual  relation,  each  is  equally  dependent, 
"  equally  independent.  Such  is  the  fact  as  given  in  and 
"  by  consciousness."  Or  rather  (he  should  have  said) 
such  is  the  answer  we  receive,  when  we  examine  and  in- 
terrogate our  jore^e^/' consciousness.  To  assert  more  than 
this,  merely  on  this  evidence,  is  to  beg  the  question 
instead  of  solving  it. 

"  Philosophers  have  not,  however,  been  content  to 
"  accept  the  fact  in  its  integrity,  but  have  been  pleased 
"  to  accept  it  only  under  such  qualifications  as  it  suited 
"  their  systems  to  devise.  In  truth,  there  are  just  as 
"  many  different  philosophical  systems  originating  in  this 
"  fact,  as  it  admits  of  various  possible  modifications.  An 
*'  enumeration  of  these  modifications,  accordingly,  affords 
**  an  enumeration  of  philosophical  theories. 

"  In  the  first  place,  there  is  the  grand  division  of 
**  philosophers  into  those  who  do,  and  those  who  do  not, 
"  accept  the  fact  in  its  integrity.  Of  modern  philosophers, 
"  almost  all  are  comprehended  under  the  latter  category, 
"  while  of  the  former,   if  we  do  not  remount   to  the 


190     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

"  sclioolmen  and  the  ancients,  I  am  only  aware  of  a  single 
"  philosopher  before  E-eid,  who  did  not  reject,  at  least  in 
"  part,  the  fact  as  consciousness  affords  it. 

"  As  it  is  always  expedient  to  possess  a  precise  name 
"  for  a  precise  distinction,  I  would  be  inclined  to  de- 
"  nominate  those  who  implicitly  acquiesce  in  the  primi- 
"  tive  duality  as  given  in  consciousness,  the  Natural 
"  Realists,  or  Natural  Dualists,  and  their  doctrine,  Na- 
"  tural  Eealism  or  Natural  Dualism."  This  is,  of  course, 
the  author's  own  doctrine. 

"  In  the  second  place,   the  philosophers  who  do  not 

"  accept  the  fact,  and  the  whole  fact,  may  be  divided  and 

"  subdivided  into  various  classes  by  various  principles  of 

"  distribution. 

"^  "  The  first  subdivision  will  be  taken  from  the  total,  or 

I  ,         "  partial,  rejection  of  the  import  of  the  fact.     1   have 

^'   '      "  previously  shown  that  to  deny  any  fact  of  conscious- 

"  ness  as  an  actual  phsenomenon  is  utterly  impossible." 

/   (But  it  is  ver}^  far  from  impossible  to  believe  that  some- 

'  J>   thing  which  we  now  confound  with  consciousness,  may 

^  \    have  been  altogether  foreign  to  consciousness  when  this 

\  was    unmingled    with    acquired    impressions.)       "  But 

"  though  necessarily  admitted  as  a  present  phajnOmenon, 

"  the  import  of  this  pha3nomenon — all  beyond  our  actual 

"  consciousness  of  its  existence — may  be   denied.      We 

"  are   able,  without  self-contradiction,    to  suppose,  and 

"  consequently  to  assert,  that   all  to  which   the  phteno- 

"  menon   of  which  we  are  conscious  refers,  is  a  decep- 

"  tion  ;"   (say  rather,   an  unwarranted  inference;)   that 

"  for  example,   the  past,  to  which  an   act  of  memory 

"  refers,  is  only  an  illusion  involved  in  our  consciousness  of 

"  the  present — that  the  unknown  subject  to  which  every 

"  phainomenon  of  which   we   are  conscious  involves  a 

"  reference,  has  no  reality  beyond  this  relerence  itself, — 

1  "  in  short,  that  all  our  knowledge  of  mind  or  matter  is 

"  only    a  consciousness   of  various  bundles   of  baseless 

"  appearances.     This  doctrine,  as  refusing  a  substantial 

"  reality  to  the  phsenomenai  existence  of  which  wo  are 

"  conscious,  is  called  Nihilism ;  and  consequently,  philo- 


ON    THE    BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL   WORLD.  191 

"  sophers,  as  they  affirm  or  deny  tlie  authority  of  con-    1 

"  sciousness  in  guaranteeing  a  substratum  or  substance 

"  to  the  manifestation  of  the  e^o  and  non-ego,  are  di-    • 

"  vided  into  Realists  or  Substantialists,  and  into  Nihilists    1 

"  or    Non-Substantialists,       Of    positive    or    dogmatic 

"Nihilism    there    is    no    example    in    modern    philo- 

"  sophy.  ....  But  as  a  sceptical  conclusion  from  the 

"  premises  of  previous  philosophers,  we  have  an  illus- 

"  trious  example  of  Nihilism  in  Hume ;    and  the  cele- 

"  brated  Fichte  admits  that  the  speculative  principles  of 

"  his  own  idealism  would,  unless  corrected  by  his  prac- 

"  tical,  terminate  in  this  result."  (T\     JjJ^ 

The  Realists,  or  Substantialists,  those  who  do  believe   ''^ 
in  a  substratuni,  but  reject  the  testimony  of  consciousness      vi\  Y^* 
to  an  immediate  cognizance  of  an  Ego  and  a  Non-ego,  our 
author  divides  into  two  classes,  according  as  they  admit 
the  real    existence    of  two    substrata,  or  only  of   one. 
These  last,  whom  he  denominates  Unitarians  or  Monists, 
either  acknowledge  the  ego  alone,  or  the  non-ego  alone, 
or  regard  the  two  as  identical.     Those  who  admit  the 
ego  alone,  looking  upon  the  non-ego  as  a  product  evolved         ^  u, 
from  it  {i.e.  as  something  purely  mental)  are  the  Idealists.   \^^ 
Those  who  admit  the  non-ego  alone,  and  regard  the  ego 
as  evolved  from  it  {i.e.  as  purely  material)  are  the  Ma- 
terialists.    The  third  class  acknowledge  the  equipoise  of 
the  two,  but  deny  their  antithesis,  maintaining  "  that  , 

"mind   and  matter  are  only  phaenomenal  modifications  ,ry\^ 
"  of  the  same  common  substance.     This  is  the  doctrine  V 

"  of  Absolute  Identity,  a  doctrine  of  which  the  most 
"  illustrious  representatives  among  recent  philosophers 
"  are  Schelling,  Hegel,  and  Cousin."*  .  j 

There  remain  those  who  admit  the  coequal  reality  of  ^V^ 
the  Ego  and  the  Non-ego,  of  mind  and  matter,  and  also 
their  distinctness  from  one  another,  but  deny  that  they 
are  known  immediately.  These  are  Dualists,  "  hut  aref 
"  distinguished  from  the  Natural  Dualists  of  whom  we 
"  formerly  spoke,  in  this — that  the  latter  establish  the 
"  existence  ot  the  two  worlds  of  mind  and  matter  on  the 

*  Lectures,  i.  296-297.  t  Ibid.  295-29t>. 


192     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 


:y 


)i^ 


"  immediate  knowledge  we  possess  of  both  series  of 
"  phEcnomena — a  knowledge  of  which  consciousness 
"  assures  us ;  whereas  the  former,  surrendering  the 
"  veracity  of  consciousness  to  our  immediate  knowledge 
"  of  material  phsenomena,  and  consequently,  our  im- 
"  mediate  knowledge  of  the  existence  of  matter,  still 
"  endeavour,  by  various  hypotheses  and  reasonings,  to 
"maintain  the  existence  of  an  unknown  external  world. 
"  As  we  denominate  those  who  maintain  a  Dualism  as 
"  involved  in  the  fact  of  consciousness,  Natural  Dualists; 
"  so  we  may  style  those  dualists  who  deny  the  evidence 
"  of  consciousness  to  our  immediate  knowledo'e  of  auii^ht 
"  beyond  the  sphere  of  mind,  Hypothetical  Dualists,  or 
"  Cosmothetic  Idealists. 

"  To   the   class   of   Cosmothetic  Idealists,  the   great 
"  majority  of  modern   philosophers  are   to  be   referred. 
"  Denjdng  an  immediate  or  intuitive  knowledsre  of  the 
"  external  reality,  whose  existence  they  maintain,  they, 
"  of  course,  hold  a  doctrine  of  mediate  or  representative 
"  perception  ;  and,  according  to  the  various  modifications 
"  of  that  doctrine,  they  are  again  subdivided  into  those 
"  who  view,   in  the  immediate  object  of  perception,  a 
"  representative   entity  present  to  the  mind,  but  not  a 
"  mere  mental   moditication,   and  into  those   who  hold 
*'  that  the    immediate    object   is   only  a  representative 
"  modification  of  the  mind  itself.     It  is  not  always  easy 
*'  to  determine  to  which  of  these  classes  some  philoso- 
*'  phers  belong.     To  the  former,   or   class  holding  the 
"  cruder  hypothesis   of  representation,  certainly  belong 
"  the  ibllowers  of  Democritus  and  Epicurus,  those  Aris- 
*'  totelians    who    held    the   vulgar   doctrine   of    species 
"  (Aristotle  himself  was  probably  a  natural  dualist),  and 
^     f'  in    recent   times,   among   many  others,   Malebranche, 
^-t^'  *'  Bei-keley,  Clarke,  Newton,  Abraham  Tucker,  &c.     To 
"  these  is  also,  but  problematically,  to  be  referred,  Locke. 
**To  the   second,  or  class  holding  the  liner  hypothesis 
**  of  representation,  belong,   without  any  doubt,   many 
•    "  of  the  Platonists,   Leibnitz,  Arnauld,  Crousaz,   Con- 
"  dillac,  Kant,  &c.,  and  to  this  class  is  also  probably  to 


ON    THE    BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL    WORLD.  193 

"be  referred  Descartes."  In  our  own  country  the  best 
known  and  typical  specimen  of  this  mode  of  thinking, 
is  Brown  ;  and  it  is  upon  him  that  our  author  discharges 
most  of  the  shafts  which  this  class  of  thinkers,  as  being 
the  least  distant  from  him  of  all  his  opponents,  copiously 
receive  from  him.* 

With  regard  to  the  various  opinions  thus  enumerated, 
I  shall  first  make  a  remark  of  general  application,  and 
shall  then  advert  particularly  to  the  objects  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  more  especial  animadversion,  the  Cosmo- 
thetic  Idealists. 

Concerning  all  these  classes  of  thinkers,  except  the 
Natural  Realists,  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  statement  is,  that 
they  deny  some  part  of  the  testimony  of  consciousness, 
and  by  so  doing  invalidate  the  appeals  which  they 
nevertheless   make  to  consciousness,  as   a  voucher  for 

*  In  one  of  the  Dissertations  on  Reid  (Dissertation  C.)  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
gives  a  much  more  elaborate,  and  more  minutely  discriminated  enumera- 
tion and  classification  of  the  opinions  which  have  been  or  might  be  held 
respecting  our  knowledge  of  mind  and  of  matter.  But  the  one  which  I 
have  quoted  from  the  Lectures  is  more  easily  followed,  and  suflBcieat  for 
all  the  purposes  for  which  I  have  occasion  to  advert  to  it.  I  shall  only 
cite  from  the  later  exposition  a  single  passage  (p.  817)  which  exhibits  in  a 
strong  light  the  sentiments  of  our  author  towards  philosophers  of  the 
school  of  Brown. 

"  Natural  Realism  and  A.bsolute  Idealism  are  the  only  systems  worthy 
"  of  a  philosopher ;  for,  as  they  alone  have  any  foundation  in  conscious- 
"  ness,  so  they  alone  have  any  consistency  in  themselves.  .  .  .  Both  build 
"  upon  the  same  fundamental  fact,  that  the  extended  object  immediately 
•'  perceived  is  identical  with  the  extended  object  actually  existing ; — for 
"  the  truth  of  this  fact,  both  can  appeal  to  the  common  sense  of  mankind  ; 
"  and  to  the  common  sense  of  mankind  Berkeley  did  appeal  not  less  confi- 
"  dently,  and  perhaps  more  logically  than  Reid.  .  .  .  The  scheme  of 
"  Hypothetical  Realism  or  Cosmothetic  Idealism,  which  supposes  that 
"  behind  the  non-existent  world  perceived,  lurks  a  correspondent  but  un- 
"  known  world  existing,  is  not  only  repugnant  to  our  natural  beliefs,  but 
"  in  manifold  contradiction  with  itself.  The  scheme  of  Natural  Realism 
"  may  be  ultimately  difficult— for,  like  all  other  truths,  it  ends  in  the 
"  inconceivable  ;  but  Hypothetical  Realism — in  its  origin — in  its  develop- 
"  ment — in  it?  result,  although  the  favourite  scheme  of  philosophers  is 
"  philosophically  absurd." 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  may  in  general  be  depended  on  for  giving  a  perfectly 
fair  statement  of  the  opinions  of  adversaries  ;  but  in  this  case  his  almost 
passionate  contempt  for  the  later  forms  of  Cosmothetic  Idealism  has  misled 
him.  No  Cosmothetic  Idealist  would  accept  as  a  fair  statement  of  his 
opinion,  the  monstrous  proposition  that  a  "  non-existent  world"  is  "  per- 
ceived." 


194     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

\^       their  own  doctrines.     If  he  had  said  that  they  all  run 
counter,  in  some  particular,  to  the  general  sentiment  of 
mankind — that   they   all    deny   some  common   opinion, 
some    natural    belief    (meaning    by    natural,    not    one 
which   rests   on  a  necessity  of  our  nature,   but  merely 
one    which,    in    common    with    innumerable    varieties 
of   false    opinion,    mankind    have    a    strong    tendency 
to  adopt) ;  had  he   said    only  this,  no  one  could  have 
contested   its    truth ;   but   it   would   not   have   been   a 
redudio  ad  ahmrdmn  of  his  opponents.     For  all   philo- 
sophers.  Sir  W.  Hamilton   as   much  as  the  rest,  deny 
some  common  opinions,  which  others  might  call  natural 
beliefs,  but  which   those  who  deny  them   consider,  and 
have   a  right  to   consider,  as  natural  prejudices ;  held, 
nevertheless,  by  the  generality  of  mankind  in  the  per- 
suasion of  their  being   self-evident,  or,  in  other  words, 
intuitive,  and   deliverances  of  consciousness.     Some   of 
the  points  on  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is   at  issue  with 
natural  beliefs,  relate  to  the  very  subject  in  hand — the 
perception    of  external   things.     We   have  found    him 
maintaining  that  we  do  not  see  the  sun;    but  an  image 
of  it,  and  that  no  two  persons  see  the  same  sun ;  in  con- 
tradiction to  as  clear  a  case  as  could  be  given  of  natural 
belief.     And  we  shall  find  him  affirming,  in  opposition 
to  an  equally  strong  natural  belief,  that  we  immediately 
perceive  extension   only  in  our  own  organs,  and  not  in 
the  objects  we  see  or  touch.     Beliefs,  therefore,  which 
seem  among  the  most  natural  that  can  be  entertained, 
are  sometimes,  in  his  opinion,  delusive  ;  and  he  has  told 
us  that  to  discriminate  which  these  are,  is  not  within 
the  competence  of  everybody,  but  only  of  philosophers. 
He  would  say,^  of  course,  that  the  beliefs  which  he  rejects 
were  not  in   our  consciousness  originally.     And  nearly 
al]  his  opponents  say  the  same  thing  of  those  which  they 
reject.     Those,    indeed,    who,    like    Kant,   believe    that 
there  are  elements  present,  even  at  the  first  moment  of 
internal  consciousness,  which  do  not  exist  in  the  object, 
but  are   derived  from  the   mind's   own  laws,  are   fairly 
open   to  Sir  W.   Hamilton's   criticism.     It  is  not  my 


ON    THE    BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL   WORLD.  195 

business  to  justify,  in  point  of  consistency,  any  more  t » 

than  of  conclusiveness,  the  reasoning,  by  which  Kant,  '  ^"^^^vJ 
after  getting  rid  of  the  outward  reality  of  all  the  attri-  jOs^^ 
butes  of  Body,  persuades  himself  that  he  demonstrates  '     >Vy^ 
the  externality  of  Body  itself.*      But,  as   regards   all        * 
existing  schools  of  thought  not  descended  from  Kant, 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  accusation  is  without  ground. 

There  is  something  more  to  be  said  respecting  the 
mixed  multitude  of  metaphysicians  whom  our  author 
groups  together  under  the  title  of  Cosmothetic  Idealists, 
and  whose  mode  of  thought  he  judges  more  harshly 
than  that  of  any  other  school.  He  represents  them  as  V 
holding  the  doctrine  that  we  perceive  external  objects, 
not  by  an  immediate,  but  by  a  mediate  or  representative  / 
perception.  And  he  recognises  three  divisions  of  them, f 
according  to  three  different  forms  in  which  this  hypo- 
thesis may  be  entertained.  The  supposed  representa- 
tive object  maybe  regarded,  first,  as  not  a  state  of  mind, 
but  something  else  ;  either  external  to  the  mind,  like 
the  species  sensibiles  of  some  of  the  ancients,  and  the 
"  motions  of  the  brain"  of  some  of  the  early  moderns  ; 
or  in  the  mind,  like  the  Ideas  of  Berkeley.  Secondly, 
it  may  be  regarded  as  a  state  of  mind,  but  a  state  dif- 
ferent from  the  mind's  act  in  perceiving  or  being  con-, 
scious  of  it :  of  this  kind,  perhaps,  are  the  Ideas  of  Locke. 
Or,  thirdly,  as  a  state  of  mind  identical  with  the  act  by 
which  we  are  said  to  perceive  it.  This  last  is  the  form 
in  which,  as  Sir  \V.  Hamilton  truly  says,  J  the  doctrine 
was  held  by  Brown. 

Now,  the  first  two  of  these  thiee  opinions  may  fairly 
be  called  what  our  author  calls  them — theories  of  me- 
diate or  representative  perception.     The  object  which,  in 

♦  In  the  Lehrsatz  of  the  21st  Supplement  to  the  Kritik  der  Reiuen 
Vernunft ;  the  Lemma  at  p.  184  of  Mr.  Heywood's  Translation.  See 
also,  in  Heywood,  the  note  at  p.  xxxix.  of  the  Second  Preface  ;  being 
Supplement  II.  in  Rosenkranz  and  Schubert's  edition  of  the  collected 
works,  vol.  ii.  p.  684.  This  reasoning  of  Kant,  to  my  mind,  strangely 
sophistical,  nevertheless  does  not  place  the  externality  of  Bodies  out  of 
the  mind.  It  is  "  externality  in  Space,"  and  Space,  in  his  philosophy,, 
does  not  exist  out  of  the  mind. 

t  Discussions,  p.  67.  +  Itad.  p.  58, 

o  2 


p 


190     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

I^jp^'  jL   (these  theories,  the  mind  is  supposed  directly  to  perceive, 
^  '^^'^jj^  is  a  tertium  quid,  which  by  the  one  theory  is,  and  by 
^   ll^the  other  is  not,  a  state  or  modification  of  mind,  but  in 
both  is  distinct  equally  from  the  act  of  perception,  and 
from  the  external  object:  and  the  mind  is  cognizant  of 


'..^.:" 


A< 


t^^  .;V^he  external  object  vicariously,  through  this  third  thing, 


of  which  alone  it  has  immediate  cognizance — of  which 
^i^^*^y.'j  alone,  therefore,  it  is,  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  sense  of  the 
u-*^^JijM  word,  conscious.  Against  both  these  theories  Reid, 
^'^'  '  Stewart,  and  our  author,  are  completely  triumphant,  and 
^  ''■  \  I  am  in  no  way  interested  in  pressing  for  a  rehearing  of 
j^  ■        1  the  cause. 

But  the  third  opinion,  which  is  Brown's,  cannot  with 
any  justness  of  thought  or  propriety  of  language  be 
called  a  theory  of  mediate  or  representative  perception. 
Had  Sir  W.  Hamilton  taken  half  the  pains  to  under- 
stand Brown  which  he  took  to  understand  far  inferior 
thinkers,  he  never  would  have  described  Brown's  doc- 
trine in  terms  so  inappropriate. 

Bepresentative  knowledge  is  always  understood  by 
our  author  to  be  knowledge  of  a  thing  by  means  of  an 
image  of  it ;  by  means  of  something  which  is  like  the 
thing  itself.  "  Representative  knowledge,"  he  says,  "  is 
"  only  deserving  of  the  name  of  knowledge  in  so  far  as 
"  it  is  conformable  with  the  intuitions  which  it  repre- 
"  sents."*  The  representation  must  stand  in  a  rela- 
tion to  what  it  represents,  like  that  of  a  picture  to  its 
original :  as  the  representation  in  memory  of  a  past 
impression  of  sense,  does  to  that  past  impression ;  as  a 
representation  in  imagination  does  to  a  supposed  pos- 
sible presentation  of  sense ;  and  as  the  Ideas  of  the  earlier 
Cosmothetic  Idealists  were  supposed  to  do  to  the  out- 
ward objects  of  which  they  were  the  image  or  impress. 
But  the  Mental  Modifications  of  Brown  and  those  who 
think  with  him,  are  not  supposed  to  bear  any  resem- 
blance to  the  objects  which  excite  them.  These  ob- 
jects are  supposed  to  be  unknown  to  us,  except  as  the 
causes  of  the  mental  modifications.     The  only  relation 

*  Dissertations  onBeid,  p.  811. 


ON    THE  BELIEF   IN   AN    EXTERNAL   WORLD.  197 

between  the  two  is  that  of  cause  and  effect.     Brown, 
being   free    from  the  vulgar  error   that   a  cause    must 
be    like    its    effect,    and    admitting   no    knowledge    of 
the  cause  (beyond  its  bare  existence)  except  the  effect 
itself,  naturally  found  nothing  in   it  which  it  was  pos- 
sible to  compare  with  the  effect,  or  in  virtue  of  which 
any  resemblance  could   be    affirmed   to   exist    between 
the  two.     In  another  place,*  Sir   W.  Hamilton  makes 
an  ostensible  distinction  between  the  fact  of  resembling 
and  that  of  truly  representing  the  objects ;    but  defines 
the  last  expression  to  mean,  affording  us  "  such  a  know- 
"  ledge  of  their  nature  as  we  should  have  were  an  im- 
**  mediate  intuition  of  the  reality  in   itself  competent  to 
"  man."     No  one  who  is  at  all  acquainted  with  Brown's 
opinions  will  pretend  him  to  have  maintained  that  we  have 
anything  of  this  sort.     He  did  not  believe  that  the  mental 
modification  afforded  us  any  knowledge  whatever  of  the 
nature  of  the  external  object.     There  is  no  need  to  quote 
passages  in  proof  of  this  ;  it  is  a  fact  patent  to  whoever 
reads  his  Lectures.     It  is  the  more  strange  that  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  should  have  failed  to  recognise  this  opinion  of 
Brown,  because  it   is  exactly  the  opinion  which  he  him- 
self holds  respecting  our  knowledge  of  objects  in  respect 
of 'their  Secondary  Qualities.     These,  he  says,  are  "  in 
their   own   nature    occult   and    inconceivable,"  and  are 
known  only  in  their  effects  on  us,  that  is,  by  the  mental 
modifications  which  they  produce.f 

Further,  Brown's  is  not  only  not  a  theory  of  repre- 
sentative perception,  but  it  is  not  even  a  theory  of 
mediate  perception.  He  assumes  no  tertium  quid,  no 
object  of  thought  intermediate  between  the  mind  and 
the  outward  object.  He  recognises  only  the  perceptive 
act ;  which  with  him  means,  and  is  always  declared  to 
mean,  the  mind  itself  perceiving.  It  will  hardly  be  pre- 
tended that  the  mind  itself  is  the  "  representative  object" 
interposed  by   him  betweep  itself  and  the  outward  thing 

*  Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  842. 
t  Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  fc-tti :  aud  the  taller  explanation  at  pp.  Sd* 

and  857. 


198     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

which  is  acting  upon  it ;  and  if  it  is  not,  there  certainly 
is  no  other.     But  if  Brown's  theory  is  not  a  theory  of 
-^      mediate  perception,  it  loses  all  that  essentially  distin- 
■^        guishes  it  from  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  own  doctrine.     For 
-K'    f    Brown,    also  thinks  that    we    have,  on  the  occasion   of 
certain  sensations,  an  instantaneous  and  irresistible  con- 
viction of  an  outward  object.     And  if  this  conviction  is 
-     immediate  and  necessitated  by  the   constitution  of  our 
nature,   in  what  does  it  differ  from   our  author's  direct 
\  consciousness  ?     Consciousness,    immediate    knowledge, 
^J^    and  intuitive  knowledge,  are,  Sir  W.  Harriilton  tells  us, 
>•  .   yj    -  convertible  expressions  ;  and  if  it  be  granted  that  when- 
^         ever  our  senses  are   affected  by  a    material  object,  we 
■-S'        immediately    and  intuitively    recognise    that    object   as 
"^  existing  and  distinct  from  us,  it  requires  a  great  deal  of 

ingenuity  to  make  out  any  substantial  difference  between 
this  immediate  intuition  of  an  external  world,  and  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  direct  perception  of  it. 

The    distinction  which    our    author   makes,  resolves 
itself,  as  explained  by  him,  into  the  difference  of  which 
he  has  said  so  much,  but  of  which  he  seemed  to  have  so 
confused  an  idea,  between  Belief  and  Knowledge.     In 
Brown's   opinion,  and  I  will  add,  in  Keid's,  the  mental 
j    modification  which   we  experience  from  the  presence  of 
I  *  an  object,    raises  in    us   an  irresistible   delief  that    the 
object  exists.     No,  says  Sir  W.  Hamilton :   it  is  not  a 
belief,  but  a  knowledge  •■  we  have  indeed  a  belief,  and  our 
knowledge  is  certified  by  the  belief;  but  this  belief  of 
ours  regarding  the  object  is  a   belief  that  we  know  it; 
"  In  perception,"^    consciousness  gives,    as    an    ultimate 
"  fact,  a  belief  of  the  knowledge  of  the  existence  of  some- 
"  thing  different  from  self     As  ultimate,  this  belief  cannot 
"  be   reduced  to   a  higher  principle ;    neither  can  it  be 
"  truly  analysed  into  a  double  element.     We  only  believe 
"  that  this  something  exists,  because  we  believe  that  we 
"  know  (are  conscious  of)    this   something   as   existing ; 
"  the  belief  of  the  existence  is  necessarily  involved  in  the 
"  belief  of  the  knowledge  of  the  existence.     Bath  are 

*  Discussions,  p.  89. 


ON   THE   BELIEF   IN   AN    EXTERNAL    WORLD.  199 

"  original,  or  neither.     Does  consciousness  deceive  us  in  ' 
"  the  latter,  it  necessarily  deludes  us  in  the  former  ;  and 
"  if  the  former,  though  a  fact  of  consciousness,  is  false, 
"  the  latter,  because  a  fact  of  consciousness,  is  not  true,  i 
"  The  beliefs  contained  in  the  two  propositions, 

"1°.  I  believe  that  a  material  world  exists  ; 

"  2°.  I  believe  that  I  immediately  know  a  material 
"  world  existing  (in  other  words,  I  believe  that 
"  the  external  reality  itself  is  the  object  of  which 
"  I  am  conscious  in  perception), 
"  though  distinguished   by  philosophers,  are   thus  vir- 
"  tually  identical.     The  belief  of  an  external  world  was 
"  too  powerful,  not  to  compel  an  acquiescence  in  its  truth. 
"  But  the  philosophers  yielded  to  nature,  only  in  so  far  ' 
"  as  to  coincide  in  the  dominant  result.     They  falsely 
"  discriminated  the  belief  in  the  existence,  from  the  belief 
"  in  the  knowledge.     With  a  few  exceptions,  they  held- 
"  fast  bj'  the  truth  of  the  first ;  but  they  concurred,  with 
"  singular  unanimity,  in  abjuring  the  second." 

Accordingly,  Brown  is  rebuked  because,  while  reject- 
ing our  natural  belief  that  we  know  the  external  object, 
he  yet  accepts  our  natural  belief  that  it  exists  as  a  suffi- 
cient warrant  for  its  existence.  Bat  what  real  distinction 
is  there  between  Brown's  intuitive  belief  of  the  existence 
of  the  object,  and  Sir  W.  fiarailtou\s  intuitive  knowledge 
of  it  ?  Just  three  pages  previous,*  Sir  W.  Hamilton  had 
said,  "  Our  knowledge  rests  ultimately  on  certain  facts  of 
"  consciousness,  which  as  primitive,  and  consequently 
"  incomprehensible,  are  given  less  in  the  form  of  cogni- 
"  tions  than  of  beliefs."  The  consciousness  of  an  exter- 
nal world  is,  on  his  own  showing,  primitive  and 
incomprehensible ;  it  therefore  is  less  a  cognition  than 
a  belief  But  if  we  do  not  so  much  know  as  believe  an 
external  world,  what  is  meant  by  saying  that  we  believe 
that  we  know  it  ?  Either  we  do  not  know,  b  it  only 
believe  it,  and  if  so.  Brown  and  the  other  philosophers 
assailed  were  right ;  or  knowledge  and  belief,  in  the  case 
of  ultimate  facts,  are  identical,  and  then,  believing  that 

*  Discussions,  p.  86. 


200     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  or  theories 

we  know  is  only  believing  that  we  believe,  which  accord- 
ing to  our  author's  and  to  all  rational  principles,  is  but 
another  word  for  simple  believing. 

It  would  not  be  fair,  however,  to  hold  our  author  to 
his  own  confused  use  of  the  terms  Belief  and  Knowledge, 
He  never  succeeds  in  making  anything  like  an  intelli- 
gible distinction  between  these  two  notions  considered 
generally,  but  in  particular  cases  we  may  be  able  to  find 
something  which  he  is  attempting  to  express  by  them. 
In  the  present  case  his  meaning  seems  to  be,  that 
Brown's  Belief  in  an  external  object,  though  instanta- 
neous and  irresistible,  was  supposed  to  be  svggested  to 
the  mind  by  its  own  sensation;  which  suggestion  Brown 
regarded  as  a  case  of  a  more  general  law,  whereby  every 
fact  suggests  the  intuitive  belief  of  a  cause  or  antecedent 
with  which  it  is  invariably  connected:  while  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  Knowledge  of  the  object  is  supposed  to 
arise  along  with  the  sensation,  and  to  be  co-ordinate 
with  it.  And  this  is  what  Sir  W.  Hamilton  means 
by  calling  Brown's  a  mediate,  his  own  an  immediate 
cognition  of  the  object :  the  real  difference  being  that, 
on  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory,  the  cognition  of  the  ego 
or  of  its  modification,  and  that  of  the  non-ego,  are  simul- 
taneous, while  on  Brown's  the  one  immediately  precedes 
the  other.  Our  author  expresses  this  meaning,  though 
much  less  clearly,  when  he  declares*  Brown's  theory  to 
be  "that  in  perception,  the  external  reality  is  not  the 
"  immediate  object  of  consciousness,  but  that  the  ego  is 
"  only  determined  in  some  unknown  manner  to  represent 
"  the  non-ego,  which  representation,  though  only  a  modi- 
"  fication  of  mind  or  self,  we  are  compelled  by  an  illusion 
"  of  our  nature,  to  ndstake  for  a  modification  of  matter, 
"  or  non-self."  This  being  our  author's  conception  of 
the  doctrine  which  he  has  to  refute,  let  us  see  m  what 
manner  he  proceeds  to  refute  it. 

"You  will  remark,"  he  says,t  "that  Brown  (and 
"  Brown  only  speaks  the  language  of  all  the  philosophers 
"  who  do  not  allow  the  ndnd  a  consciousness  of  aught 

*  Lectures,  ii.  86.  f  Ibid.  ii.  106. 


ON    THE    BELIEF   IN   AN    EXTERNAL  WORLD.  201 

"  beyond  its  own  states,)  misstates  the  phaenomenon 
"  when  he  asserts  that,  in  perception,  there  is  a  reference 
*'  from  the  internal  to  the  external,  from  the  known  to 
"  the  unknown.  That  this  is  not  the  fact,  our  observa- 
"  tion  of  the  phaenomenon  will  at  once  convince  you. 
"  In  an  act  of  perception,  I  am  conscious  of  something 
"  as  self  and  of  something  as  not  self :  this  is  the  simple 
"  fact.  The  philosophers,  on  the  contrary,  who  will  not 
"  accept  this  fact,  misstate  it.  They  say  that  we  are 
."  conscious  of  nothing  but  a  certain  modification  of 
"  mind  ;  but  this  modification  involves  a  reference  to, — 
"  in  other  words,  a  representation  of, — something  external 
"  as  its  object.  Now  this  is  untrue.  We  are  conscious  >^ 
"  of  no  reference,  of  no  representation  :  we  believe  that  i 
"  the  object  of  which  we  are  conscious  is  the  object  which  ' 
"  exists."  To  this  argument  (of  the  worth  of  which 
something  has  been  said  already)  I  shall  return  presently. 
But  he  subjoins  a  second. 

"  Nor  could  there  possibly  be  such  reference  or  repre- 
"  sentation  ;  for  reference  or  representation  supposes  a 
"  knowledge  already  possessed  of  the  object  referred  to 
"  or  represented ;  but  perception  is  the  faculty  by  which 
"  our  first  knowledge  is  acquired,  and  therefore  cannot 
"  suppose  a  previous  knowledge  as  its  condition."  And 
further  on  :*  "  Mark  the  vice  of  the  procedure.  We  can 
"  only,  1°,  assert  the  existence  of  an  external  world  in- 
"  asmuch  as  we  know  it  to  exist ;  and  we  can  only,  2°, 
"  assert  that  one  thing  is  representative  of  another,  inas- 
"  much  as  the  thing  represented  is  known,  independently 
"  of  the  representation.  But  how  does  the  hypothesis 
"  of  a  representative  perception  proceed  ?  It  actually 
"  converts  the  fact  into  an  hypotliesis :  actually  converts 
"  the  hypothesis  into  a  fact.  On  this  theory,  we  do  not 
"  know  the  existence  of  an  external  world,  except  on  the 
"  supposition  that  that  which  we  do  know,  truly  repre- 
"  sents  it  as  existing.  The  hypothetical  realist  cannot, 
"therefore,  establish  the  fact  of  the  external  world, 
"  except  upon  the  fact  of  its  representation.     This  is 

*  Lectures,  ii.  138,  139. 


>\ 


202     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

"  manifest.  We  have,  therefore,  next  to  ask  him,  how 
"  he  knows  the  fact,  that  tlie  external  world  is  actually 
"  represented.  A  representation  supposes  something' 
"  represented,  and  the  representation  of  the  external 
"  world  supposes  the  existence  of  that  world.  Now  the 
"  hypothetical  realist,  when  asked  how  he  proves  the 
"  reality  of  the  outer  world,  which,  ex  hypothesis  he  does 
*'  not  know,  can  only  say  that  he  infers  its  existence  from 
"  the  fiict  of  its  representation.  But  the  fact  of  the  re- 
"  presentation  of  an  external  world  supposes  the  exis- 
"  tence  of  that  world ;  therefore  he  is,  again  at  the 
"  point  from  which  he  started.  He  has  been  arguing 
*' in  a  circle." 

Let  me  first  remark  that  this  reasoning  assumes  the 
whole  point  in  dispute  ;  it  presupposes  that  the  supposi- 
tion which  it  is  brought  to  disprove  is  impossible.  The 
theory  of  the  third  form  of  Cosmothetic  Idealism  is,  that 
though  we  are  conscious  only  of  the  sensations  which 
'an  object  gives  us,  we  are  determined  by  a  necessity  of 
our  nature,  which  some  call  an  instinct,  others  an  intui- 
tion, others  a  fundamental  law  of  belief,  to  ascribe  these 
sensations  to  something  external,  as  their  substratum,  or 
as  their  cause.  There  is  surely  nothing  a  priori  impos- 
sible in  this  supposition.  The  supposed  instinct  or  in- 
tuition seems  to  be  of  the  same  family  with  many  other 
Laws  of  Thought,  or  Natural  Beliefs,  which  our  author 
not  only  admits  without  scruple,  but  enjoins  obedience  to, 
under  the  usual  sanction,  that  otherwise  our  intelligence 
must  be  a  lie.  In  the  present  case,  however,  he,  without 
the  smallest  warrant,  excludes  this  from  the  list  of  pos- 
sible hypotheses.  He  says  that  we  cannot  infer  a  reality 
from  a  mental  representation,  unless  we  already  know 
the  reality  independently  of  the  mental  representation. 
Now  he  could  hardly  help  being  aware  that  this  is  the 
very  matter  in  dispute.  Those  who  hold  the  opinion  he 
argues  against,  do  not  admit  the  premise  upon  which  he 
argues.  They  say  that  we  may  be,  and  are,  necessitated 
to  infer  a  cause,  of  which  we  know  nothing  whatever 
except  its  effect.     And  why  not  ?     Sir    W.  Hamilton 


ON    THE  BELIEF    IN    AN   EXTERNAL  WORLD.  203 

thinks  us  entitled  to  infer  a  substance  from  attributes, 
though  he  allows  that  we  know  nothing  of  the  substance 
except  its  attributes. 

But  this  is  not  the  worst,  and  there  are  few  specimens 
of  our  author  in  which  his  deficiencies  as  a  philosopher 
stand  out  in  a  stronger  light.  As  Burke  in  politics,  so 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  in  metaphysics,  was  too  often  a 
polemic  rather  than  a  connected  thinker  :  the  generali- 
zations of  both,  often  extremely  valuable,  seem  less  the 
matured  convictions  of  a  scientific  mind,  than  weapons 
snatched  up  for  the  service  of  a  particular  quarrel.  If 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  can  only  seize  upon  something  which 
will  strike  a  hard  blow  at  an  opponent,  he  seldom 
troubles  himself  how  much  of  his  own  edifice  may  be 
knocked  down  by  the  shock.  Had  he  examined  the 
argument  he  here  uses,  sufficiently  to  determine  whether 
he  could  stand  by  it  as  a  deliberate  opinion,  he  would  have 
perceived  that  it  committed  him  to  the  doctrine  that 
there  is  no  such  thinsr  as  representative  knowledge.  But 
it  is  one  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  most  positive  tenets  that 
there  is  representative  knowledge,  and  that  Memory, 
among  other  things,  is  an  example  of  it.  Let  us  turn 
back  to  his  discussion  of  that  subject,  and  see  what  he, 
at  that  time,  considered  representative  knowledge  to  be. 

"Every  act,*  and  consequently  every  act  of  know- 
"  ledge,  exists  only  as  it  now  exists ;  and  as  it  exists 
"  only  in  the  Now,  it  can  be  cognizant  only  of  a  now- 
"  existent  object.  But  the  object  known  in  memorj"^  is, 
"  ex  hi/pothed,  past ;  consequently,  we  are  reduced  to 
"  the  dilemma,  either  of  refusing  a  past  object  to  be  ' 
"  known  in  memory  at  all^  or  of^dmitting  it  to  be  only 
"  mediately  known,  in  andfthrough  a  present  object,  i 
"  That  the  latter  alternative  is  the  true  one,  it  will 
"  require  a  very  few  explanatory  words  to  convince  you. 
"  What  are  the  contents  of  an  act  of  memory  ?  An  act 
"  of  memory  is  merely  a  present  state  of  mind  which  we 
"  are  conscious  of  not  as  absolute,  but  as  relative  to,  and 
"  representing,  another  state  of  mind,  and  accompanied  with 

*  Lectures,  i.  219,  220. 


204     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 


"  the  belief  that  the  state  of  mind,  as  now  represented  has 
"  actually  been.  I  remember  an  event  I  saw — the  land- 
"  ing  of  George  IV.  at  Leith.  This  remembrance  is 
**  only  a  consciousness  of  certain  iinaginations,  involving 
"  the  conviction  that  these  imaginations  now  represent  ideally 
"  what  I  formerly  really  experienced.  All  that  is  imme- 
"  diately  known  in  the  act  of  memory,  is  the  present 
"  mental  modification,  that  is,  the  representation  and 
"  concomitant  belief  Beyond  this  mental  modification 
"  we  know  nothing ;  and  this  mental  modification  is  not 
"  only  known  to  consciousness^  but  only  exists  in  and 
"  by  consciousness.  Of  any  past  object,  real  or  ideal,  the 
"  mind  knows  and  ca7i  knoiv  nothing,  for,  ex  hypolhesi,  no 
"  such  object  now  exists ;  or  if  it  be  said  to  know  such 
"  an  object,  it  can  only  be  said  to  know  it  mediately,  as 
"  represented  in  the  present  mental  modification.  Properly 
"  speaking,  however,  wekiow  only  the  actual  and  pre- 
*'  sent,  and  all  real  knowledge  is  an  immediate  know- 
"  ledge.  What  is  said  to  be  mediately  known,  is,  in 
"  truth  not  known  to  be,  but  only  believed  to  be  :  for 

I"  its  existence  is  only  an  inference  resting  on  the  belief  that 
"  the  mental  modification  truly  rejjresents  what  is  in  itself 
"  beyond  the  sphere  of  knoioledge." 

Had  Sir  W.  Hamilton  totally  forgotten  all  this,  when 
a  few  lectures  afterwards,  having  then  in  front  of  him 
a  set  of  antagonists  who  needed  the  theory  here  laid 
down,    he  repudiated  it — denying  altogether  the  possi- 
bility of  the  mental  state  so  truly  and  clearly  expressed 
in  this  passage,  and  afBrming  that  we  cannot  possibly 
recognise  a  mental  modification  to  be  representative  of 
~0-  I   something  else,  unless  we  have  a  present  knowledge  of 
►  'jrj;v.'*r'",.ithat  something  else,  otherwise  obtained?     With  merely 
\^     t,    the  alteration  of  putting  instead  of  a  past  state  of  mind, 
>'^'*^  .  a   present    external   object,   the    Cosmothetic   Idealists 
>j^*^i^^'   might  borrow  his  language  down  to  the  minutest  detail. 
>*  j**.*-^*  ,f  They,  too,  believe  that  the  mental  modification  is  a  pre- 
s^fV^     sent  state  of  mind,  which  we  are  conscious  of,  not  as 
absolute,  but  as  relative  to,  and  representing,  "  an  ex- 


it- 


•«^.« 


Vw«^.       *•  ternal  object,   and  accompanied  with  the   belief  that 


%^, 


^^r^'^':7^>^'  ... 


J- 


ON    THE    BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL    WORLD.  205 

"  the  object  as  now  represented,  actually"  is :  that  we 
know  something  (viz.  matter)  only  "  as  represented  in 
"  the  present  mental  modification,"  and  that  "  its  exis- 
"  tence  is  only  an  inference,  resting  on  the  belief  that 
"  tlie  mental  modification  truly  represents  what  is  in 
**  itself  beyond  the  sphere  of  knowledge."     They  do  not, 
strictly  speaking,  require  quite  so  much  as  this  :  for  the 
word  "  represents,"  especially  with  "  truly"  joined  to  it, 
suggest    the  idea  of   a  resemblance,    such  as  does,    in 
reality,  exist  between  the  picture  of  a  fact  in  memor\', 
and    the  present   impression   to   which   it  corresponds ; 
but  the  Cosmothetic  Idealists   only  maintain  that    the 
mental  modification  arises  from  something,  and  that  the 
reality  of  this   unknown   something   is  testified   by   a 
natural  belief.     That  they  apply  to  one  case  the  same 
theory  which  our  author  applies  to  another,  does  not,  of 
course,  prove  them  to  be  right ;  but  it  proves  the  suicidal 
character  (to  use  one  of  his  favourite  expressions)  of  our 
author's  argument,    when  he  scouts   the  supposition  of 
an  instinctive  inference  from  a  known  effect  to  an  un- 
known_causej.  as  an  hypothesis  which  can  in  no  possible 
case  be  legitimate ;  forgetful  that  its  legitimacy  is  re- 
quired by  his  own  psychology,  one  of  the  leading  doc- 
trines of  which  is  entirely  grounded  on  it.  I*»/**^' 
It  is   not   onl}^  in  treating  of  Memory,  that  Sir  W.  yv***^*^ 
Hamilton  requires  a  process  of  thought  precisely  similar  /ai!A.«v*ii 
to  that  which,  when  employed  by  opponents,  he  declares  <^*^  '^ 
to  be  radically  illegitimate.     I  have  already  mentioned  ^f^t***^ 
that  in  his  opinion  our  perceptions  of  sight  are  not  per-  fM^w^  < 
ceptions  of  the  outward  object,  but  of  its  image,  a  "  modi-  ^'-^  "^ 
•'  fication  of  light  in  immediate  relation  to  our  organ  of  *y  "T^ 
"  vision,"  and  that  no  two  persons  see  the  same  sun  ;  pro-  ;  '"'^  ,  . 
positions  in  direct  conflict  with  the  "  natural  beliefs"  to  '*^*****' 
which  he  so  often  refers,  and  to  which  Raid,  not  without  -f^'^^^ 
reason,  appeals  in  this  instance  ;  for  assuredly  people  in 
general  are  as  firmly  convinced  that  what  they  see  is  the 
real  sun,  as  that  what  they  touch  is  the  real  table.     Let  us 
hear  Sir  W.  Hamilton  once  more  on  this  subject.    "  It  is* 

*  Lectures,  ii.  153,  154. 


i!^ 


206     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

"  not  by  perception,  but  by  a  process  of  reasoninar,  that 
"  we  connect  the  objects  of  sense  with  existences  beyond 
"  the  sphere  of  immediate  knowledge.  It  is  enough  that 
"  perception  affords  us  the  knowledge  of  the  non-ego  at 
"  the  point  of  sense.  To  arrogate  to  it  the  power  of 
**  immediately  informing  us  of  external  things,  wMc/t  are 
"  oj?//i/  the  causes  of  the  object  we  immediately  perceive,  is 
"  either  positively  erroneous,  or  a  confusion  of  language 
"  arising  from  an  inadequate  discrimination  of  the  phseno- 
"  menon."  Here  is  a  case  in  which  we  know  something 
to  be  a  representation,  though,  in  our  author's  opinion, 
that  which,  it  represents  not  only  is  not,  at  the  present 
time,  known  to  us,  but  never  was,  and  never  will  be  so. 
The  Cosmothetic  Idealists  desire  only  the  same  liberty 
which  SirW.  Hamilton  here  exercises,  of  concluding  from 
a  phsenomenon  directly  known,  to  something  unknown 
which  is  the  cause  of  the  phfenomenon.  They  postulate 
the  possibility  that  what  our  author  holds  to  be  true  of 
the  non-ego  at  a  distance,  may  be  true  of  the  non-ego  at 
the  point  of  sense,  namely,  that  it  is  not  known  imme- 
diately, but  as  a  necessar}^  inference  from  what  is  known. 
To  shut  the  door  upon  this  supposition  as  inherently 
inadmissible,  and  make  an  exactly  similar  one  ourselves 
as  often  as  our  system  requires  it,  does  not  befit  a  philo- 
sopher, or  a  critic  of  philosophers.* 

*  Some  of  the  inconsistenciep  here  pointed  out  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
speculations  respecting  Perception  have  been  noticed,  and  ably  discussed 
by  Mr.  Bailey,  in  the^ fourth  letter  of  the  Second  Series  of  his  Letters  on 
the  Philosophy  of  the  Human  Mind. 

In  treating  of  Modified  Logic  (Lectures,  iv.  %1,  68),  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
justifies,  after  his  own  manner,  the  assumption  made  alike  by  himself  and 
by  the  Cosmothetic  Idealists ;  and  the  grounds  of  justification  are  as  avail- 
able to  them  as  to  him.  "  Real  truth  is  the  correspondence  of  our  thoughts 
"  with  the  exiatences  which  constitute  their  objects.  But  here  a  difficulty 
"  arises  :  how  can  we  know  that  there  is,  that  there  can  be  such  a  corre- 
"  spondence  ?  All  that  we  know  of  the  objects  is  through  the  presenta- 
"  tions  of  our  faculties  ;  but  whether  these  present  the  objects  as  they  are 
"  in  themselves,  we  can  never  ascertain,  for  to  do  this  it  would  be  requisite 
"  to  go  out  of  ourselves, — out  of  our  faculties, — to  obtain  a  knowledge  of 
"  the  objects  by  other  faculties,  and  thus  to  compare  our  old  presentations 
"  with  our  new."  The  very  difficulty  which  we  have  seen  him  throwing 
in  the  teeth  of  the  Cosmothetic  Idealists.  "  But  all  this,  even  were  the 
"  supposition  possible,  would  be  incompetent  to  afford  us  the  certainty 
*•  required.     For  were  it  possible  to  leave  our  old,  and  tj  obtain  a  new,  set 


ON    THE    BELIEF    IN   AN   EXTERNAL    WORLD.  207 

In  the  controversy  with  Brown,  which  forms  the  second 
paper  in  the  "  Discussions,"  and  much  of  which  is  re- 
produced verbatim  in  our  author's  Lectures,  the  argument 
which  I  have  now  examined  does  not  appear.  In  the 
room  of  it,  we  have  the  following  argument.*  If  Brown 
is  right,  "  the  mind  either  knows  the  reality  of  what  it 
"  represents,  or  it  does  not."  The  first  supposition  is 
dismissed  for  the  absurdities  it  involves,  and  because  it 
is  inconsistent  with  Brown's  doctrine.  But  if  the  mind 
does  not  know  the  reality  of  what  it  represents,  the 
"  alternative  remains,  that  the  mind  is  blindly  determined 
"  to  represent,  and  truly  to  represent,  the  reality  which  it 
"  does  not  know."  And  if  so,  the  mind  "  either  blindly 
"determines  itself"  or  "is  blindly  determined"  by  a 
supernatural  power.  The  latter  supposition  he  rejects 
because  it  involves  a  standing  miracle  ;  the  former  as 
"  utterly  irrational,    inasmuch    as  it   would   explain  an 

"  of  faculties,  by  wliicli  to  test  the  old,  still  the  veracity  of  these  new 
"  faculties  would  be  equally  obnoxious  to  doubt  as  the  veracity  of  the  old. 
"  For  what  guarantee  could  we  obtain  for  the  credibility  in  the  one  case, 
"  which  we  do  not  already  possess  in  the  other .''  The  new  faculties  could 
"  only  assert  their  own  truth ;  but  this  is  done  by  the  old ;  and  it  is  impos- 
"  sible  to  imagine  any  presentations  of  the  non-ego  by  any  finite  intelli- 
"  gence  to  which  a  doubt  might  not  be  raised,  whether  these  presentations 
"  were  not  merely  subjective  modifications  of  the  conscious  ego  itself."  It 
is  a  very  laudable  practice  in  philosophizing  to  state  the  difficulties 
strongly.  But  when  the  difficulty  is  one  which  in  any  case  has  to  be  sur- 
mounted, we  should  allow  others  to  surmount  it  in  the  same  mode  which 
we  adopt  for  ourselves-  This  mode,  in  the  present  case,  is  our  author's 
usual  one  :  "  All  that  could  be  said  in  answer  to  such  a  doubt  is  that  if 
"  such  were  true,  our  whole  nature  is  a  lie :"  in  other  words,  our  nature 
prompts  us  to  believe  that  the  modification  of  the  conscious  ego  points  to, 
and  results  from,  a  non-ego  with  corresponding  properties.  The  Cosmo- 
thetic  Idealists  do  but  say  the  same  thing  :  and  they  have  as  good  a  right 
to  say  it  as  our  author. 

In  saying  that  the  Cosmothetic  Idealists  can  make  out  as  good  a  case 
for  their  opinion  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  for  his,  Ldo  not  say  that  their  case 
is  good  against  Berkeley,  who  held  that  the  non-ego  we  are  compelled  to 
postulate  as  the  cause  of  our  sensations  is  not  matter,  but  a  mind.  Minds, 
Berkeley  would  say,  we  know  to  exist,  in  ourselves  by  consciousness,  in 
other  beings  by  evidence.  Matter  we  do  not  know  to  exist,  for  all  the 
indications  of  it  are  otherwise  explicable  :  we  ought  not,  therefore,  to 
assume  its  existence  until  it  is  shown  that  our  sensations  cannot  be  caused 
by  a  Mind.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  escapes  from  this  argument  by  his  doctrine, 
that  Matter  with  its  f  rmiary  and  Secundo-primary  qualities  is  directly 
and  immediately  perceived. 

*  Discussions,  p.  ^1. 


208     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

"  effect,  by  a  cause  wholly  inadequate  to  its  production. 
"  On  this  alternative,  knowledge  is  supposed  to  be  the 
"  effect  of  ignorance, — intelligence  of  stupidity — life  of 
"  death."  All  this  artillery  is  directed  against  the  simple 
supposition  that  by  a  law  of  our  nature,  a  modification 
of  our  own  minds  may  assure  us  of  the  existence  of  an 
unknown  cause.  The  author's  persistent  ignorance  of 
Brown's  opinion  is  surprising.  Brown  knows  nothing 
of  the  mental  modification  as  truly  representing  the  un- 
known reality ;  he  claims  no  knowledge  as  arising  out  of 
ignorance,  no  intelligence  growing  out  of  stupidity.  He 
claims  only  an  instinctive  belief  implanted  by  nature  ; 
and  the  menacing  alternative,  that  the  mind  must  either 
determine  itself  to  this  belief,  or  be  determined  to  it  by 
a  special  interference  of  Providence,  could  be  applied 
with  exactly  as  much  justice  to  the  earth's  motion.  But 
though  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  weapon  falls  harmless  upon 
Brown,  it  recoils  with  terrible  effect  upon  his  own 
theories  of  representative  cognition.  A  remembrance, 
for  example,  does  represent,  and  truly  represent,  the 
past  fact  remembered  :  and  we  do,  through  that  repre- 
sentation, mediately  know  the  past  fact,  which  in  any 
other  sense  of  the  word,  according  to  our  author,  we  do 
not  know.  Although  therefore  the  conclusion  "  that  the 
mind  is  blindly  determined  to  represent,  and  truly  to 
represent,  the  reality  which  it  does  not  know,"  i  not 
obligatory  upon  Brown,  it  is  upon  Sir  W.  Hamilton. 
On  his  own  showing  he  has  to  choose  between  the 
absurdity  that  the  mind  "  blindly  determines  itself," 
and  the  perpetual  miracle  of  its  being  determined  by 
divine  interference.  This  is  one  of  the  weakest  exhibi- 
tions of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  that  I  have  met  with  in  his 
writings.  For  the  difficulty  by  which  he  thouglit  to 
overwhelm  Brown,  and  which  does  not  touch  Brown, 
but  falls  back  upon  himself,  is  no  difficulty  at  all,  but 
the  merest  moonshine.  The  transcendent  absurdity,  as 
he  considers  it,  that  the  mind  should  be  blindly  deter- 
mined to  represent,  and  truly  to  represent,  the  reality 
which  "  it  does  not  know,"  instead  of  an  absurdity,  is 


ON    THE    BELIEF    IN    AN   EXTERNAL    WORLD.  200 

tlie  exact  expression  of  a  fact.  Tt  is  a  literal  description 
of  what  takes  place  in  an  act  of  memory.  As  often  as 
we  recollect  a  past  event,  and  on  the  faith  of  that  recol- 
lection, believe  or  know  that  the  event  really  happened, 
the  mind,  by  its  constitution,  is  "  blindly  determined  to 
represent,  and  truly  to  represent  "  a  fact  which,  except  as 
witnessed  by  that  representation,  "  it  does  not  know."* 
It  may  generally,  I  think,  be  observed  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  that  his  most  recherche  arguments  are  his 
weakest ;  they  certainly  are  so  in  the  present  case.  It 
would  have  been  wiser  in  him  to  have  been  contented 
with  his  first  and  simpler  argument,  that  Brown'is 
doctrine  conflicts  with  consciousness,  inasmuch  as  "  we 
are  conscious  of  no  reference,  of  no  representation  :" 
or,  to  speak  more  clearly,  we  are  not  aware  that  the 
existence  of  an  eternal  reality  is   suggested  to  us  by 

*  Our  belief  in  tlie  veracity  of  Memory  is  evidently  ultimate :  no  reason 
can  be  given  for  it  which  does  not  presuppose  the  belief,  and  assume  it  to 
be  well  grounded.  This  point  is  forcibly  urged  in  the  Philosophical  Intro- 
duction to  Dr.  Ward's  able  work,  "  Oq  Nature  and  Grace  :"  a  book  the 
readers  of  which  are  likely  to  be  limited  by  its  being  addressed  specially 
to  Catholics,  but  showing  a  capacity  in  the  writer  which  might  otherwise  ' 
have  made  him  one  of  the  most  effective  champions  of  the  Intuitive  school. 
Though  I  do  not  believe  morality  to  be  intuitive  in  Dr.  Ward's  sense,  1 
think  his  book  of  great  practical  worth,  by  the  strenuous  manner  in  which 
it  maintains  morality  to  have  another  foundation  than  the  arbitrary  decree 
of  God,  and  shows,  by  great  weight  of  evidence,  that  this  is  the  orthodox 
doctrine  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 

Dr.  Ward,  returning  to  this  subject  in  the.  Dublin  Review  (p.  309),  says 
that  in  declaring  our  belief  in  the  veracity  of  Memory  to  be  ultimate,  I  am 
admitting  "  an  exception  "  to  the  doctrine  of  what  he  calls  the  Pheno- 
menist  school,  and  "  an  exception  which  no  phenomenist  had  made  before." 
The  necessity  of  making  this  exception,  he  deems  a  powerful  argument 
against  the  doctrine  itself.  "  If  ever  there  were  a  paradoxical  position" 
mine,  according  to  him,  "  is  one  on  the  surface.  It  is  most  intelligible  to 
"  say  that  there  are  no  trustworthy  institutions ;  and  it  is  most  intelligible 
"  to  say  that  there  are  many  such;  but  on  the  surface  it  is  the  ne  plus 
"  ultra  of  paradox,  to  say  that  there  is  just  one  such,  and  no  more." 

First,  on  what  account  is  it  more  improbable  that  there  should  be  "just 
one  "  source  of  intuitive  knowledge  besides  present  consciousness,  making 
two  in  all,  than  that  jthere  should  be  three,  four,  or  any  other  number. 
To  me  it  seems  that  there  is  no  antecedent  presumption  in  the  case,  but  a. 
mere  question  of  evidence.  Dr.  Ward,  witn  good  reason,  challenges  me  ■ 
to  explain  "  where  the  distinction  lies  between  acts  of  memory  and  other 
alleged  intuitions "  which  I  do  not  admit  as  such.  The  distinction  is, 
that  as  all  the  explanations  of  mental  phenomena  presuppose  Memory, 
Memory  itself  cannot  admit  of  being  explained.  Whenever  this  is  shown 
to  be  true  of  any  other  part  of  our  knowledge,  I  »hall  admit  that  part  to 

P 


210     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

our  sensations.     We  seem  to  become  aware  of  both  at 
.  once. 

The  fact  is  as  alleged,  but  it  proves  nothing,  being 
consistent  with  Brown's  doctrine.  Whether  the  belief 
in  a  non-ego  arose  in  our  first  act  of  perception,  simul- 
taneously with  the  sensation,  or  not  until  suggested  by 
the  sensation,  we  have,  as  I  before  remarked,  no  means 

be  intuitive.  Dr.  Ward  thinks  that  there  are  various  other  intuitions 
"  more  favourably  circumstanced  for  the  establishment  of  their  trust- 
"  worthiness  "  than  Memory  itself,  and  he  ^ives  as  an  example  our  convic- 
tion of  the  wickedness  of  certain  acts.  My  reason  for  rejecting  this  as  a 
case  of  intuition  is,  that  the  conviction  can  be  explaiiijed  without  pre- 
supposing, as  part  of  the  explanation,  the  very  fact  itself;  which  the  belief 
in  Memory  cannot. 

Dr.  Ward  has  been  too  hasty  in  saying  that  no  phenomenist  ever  before 
made  this  "  exception."  I  doubt  if  he  could  point  out  any  phenomenist 
who  has  not  made  it,  either  expressly  or  by  implication.  All  who  have 
attempted  the  explanation  of  the  human  mind  by  sensation  have  postu- 
lated the  knowledge  of  past  sensations  as  well  as  of  present ;  some  of  them 
have  expressly  said  so.  Take  Hume,  for  instance,  the  moat  extreme  of 
Phenomenists  :  he  always  excepts  Memory  from  the  sources  of  knowledge 
of  which  he  attempts  to  find  an  explanation.  In  his  "  Sceptical  Doubts," 
he  says  "  It  may  be  a  subject  worthy  curiosity,  to  inquire  what  is  the 
*'  nature  of  that  evidence  which  assures  us  of  any  real  existence  and  matter 
'"  of  fact,  beyond  the  present  testimony  of  our  senses,  or  the  records  of  our 
"memory."  And  again,  "all  reasonings  concerning  matter  of  fact  seem 
*'  to  be  founded  in  the  relation  of  Cause  and  Effect.  By  means  of  that 
"  relation  alone  can  we  go  beyond  the  evidence  of  our  memory  and  senses." 
And  in  his  "  Sceptical  Solution  of  these  Doubts,"  where  he  is  attempting 
to  explain  Belief  by  the  laws  of  Association,  he  asserts  that  belief  "  where 
it  reaches  beyond  the  memory  and  senses  "  is  amenable  to  his  theory. 
It  would  be  easy  to  quote  equally  decisive  passages  from  other  Pheno- 
menists. How,  indeed,  could  any  one  make  Experience  the  source  of  all 
our  knowledge  without  postulating  the  belief  in  Memory  as  the  funda- 
mental fact  ?    What  is  Experience  but  Memory  P 

For  myself,  I  do  admit  other  sources  of  knowledge  than  sensation  and 
the  memory  of  sensation,  though  not  than  consciousness  and  the  memory 
of  consciousness.  I  have  distinctly  declared  that  the  elementary  relations 
(if  our  sensations  to  one  another,  viz.  their  resemblances,  and  their  succes- 
sions and  coexistences,  are  subjects  of  direct  apprehension.  And  I  have 
avowedly  left  the  question  undecided  whether  our  perception  of  om-selves — 
of  our  own  personality — is  not  a  case  of  the  same  kind.  It  is  curious  that 
while  Dr.  Ward  thinks  I  am  bound  to  explain  why  I  acknowledge  only 
one  case  of  intuition,  Dr.  M'Cosh  charges  me  with  postulating  as  great  a 
number  of  first  principles  as  are  demanded  by  either  the  Scotch  or  ,the 
German  metaphysicians,  and  has  devoted  a  whole  chapter  of  his  book  to 
an  enumeration  of  them  ;  including  several  which,  as  he  might  have  known, 
1  regard  as  truths  indeed,  but  not  as  ultimate  principles.  I  do  riot  know 
what  extreme  of  supposed  psychological  analysis  Dr.  M'Cosh  thought  it 
incumbent  on  me  to  profess.  In  my  estimation,  the  doctrine  of  "  all  or 
none  "  is  no  more  a  necessity  in  philosophy  than  in  politics. 


ON    THE   BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL   WORLD.  211 

of  directly  ascertaining.  As  far  as  depends  on  direct 
evidence,  the  subject  is  inscrutable.  But  this  we  may 
know,  that  even  if  the  suggestion  theory  were  true,  the 
belief  suggested  would  by  the  laws  of  association  become 
so  intimately  blended  with  the  sensation  suggesting  it, 
that  long  before  we  were  able  to  reflect  on  our  mental 
operations,  we  should  have  become  entirely  incapable  of 
thinking  of  the  two  things  as  other  than  simultaneous. 
An  appeal  to  consciousness  avails  nothing,  when,  even 
though  the  doctrine  opposed  were  true,  the  appeal  might 
equally,  and  with  the  same  plausibility,  be  made.  The 
facts  are  alike  consistent  with  both  opinions,  and,  for 
aught  that  appears,  Brown's  is  as  likely  to  be  true  as 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's.  The  difference  between  them,  as 
already  observed,  is.  extremely  small,  and  I  will  add, 
supremely  unimportant.  If  the  reality  of  matter  is 
certified  to  us  by  an  irresistible  belief,  it  matters  little 
whether  we  reach  the  belief  by  the  two  steps,  or  by  only 
one. 

The  really  important  difference  of  opinion  on  the 
subject  of  Perception,  between  Brown  and  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  is  far  other  than  this.  It  is,  that  Sir  W.  \ 
Hamilton  believes  us  to  have  a  direct  intuition  not  solely 
of  the  reality  of  matter,  but  also  of  its  primary  qualities, 
Extension,  Solidity,  Figure,  &c.,  which,  according  to 
him,  we  know  as  in  the  material  object,  and  not  as  modi- 
fications of  ourselves  :  while  Brown  believes  that  matter 
is  suggested  to  us  only  as  an  unknown  something,  all 
whose  attributes,  as  known  or  conceived  by  us,  are  resolv- 
able into  affections  of  our  senses.  In  Brown's  opinion 
we  are  cognizant  of  a  non-ego  in  the  perceptive  act, 
only  in  the  indefinite  form  of  something  external ;  all 
else  we  are  able  to  know  of  it  is  only  that  it  produces 
certain  affections  in  us  :  which  is  also  our  author's  opinion 
as  regards  the  Secondary  Qualities.  The  difference  there- 
fore, between  Brown  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  is  not  of  the 
kind  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  considers  it  to  be,  but  con- 
sists mainly  in  this,  that  Brown  really  held  what  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  held  only  verbally,  the  doctrine  of  the 

p  2 


^12     SIR  wiLLTAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

Relativity  t)f  our  knowledge.  T  shall  attempt,  further 
on,  to  show  that  on  the  point  on  which  they  really 
differed,  Brown  was  right,  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  totally 
wrong. "^ 

The  considerations  which  have  now  been  adduced 
are  subversive  of  a  great  mass  of  triumphant  animad- 
version by  our  author  on  the  ignorance  and  carelessness 
of  Brown,  and  some  milder  criticism  on  Reid.  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  thinks  it  astonishing  that  neither  of  these 
philosophers  should  have  recognised  Natural  Realism, 
and  the  third  form  of  Cosmothetic  Idealism,  as  two 
different  modes  of  thought.  Reid,  whom  he  makes  a 
great  point  of  claiming  as  a  Natural  Realist,  was,  he 
says,  quite  unaware  of  the  possibility  of  the  other  opinion, 
and  did  not  guard  against  it  by  his  language,  leaving  it 
therefore,  open  to  dispute  whether,  instead  of  being  a 
Natural  Realist,  he  was  not,  like  Brown,  a  Cosmothetic 
Idealist  of  the  third  class  ;  while  Brown,  on  the  other 
hand,  never  conceived  Natural  Realism,  nor  thought  it 
possible  that  Reid  held  any  other  than  his  own  opinion, 
as  he  invariably  affirms  him  to  have  done.  I  apprehend 
that  both  philosophers  are  entirely  clear  of  the  blame 
thus  imputed  to  them.  Reid  never  imagined  Brown's 
doctrine,  nor  Brown  Reid's,  as  anything  different  from 
his  own,  because  in  truth  they  were  not  different.     If 

*  There  is  also  a  difference  between  Brown  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  in  the 
particular  category  of  intuitive  knowledge  to  which  they  referred  the 
cognition  of  the  existence  of  matter.  Brown  deemed  it  a  case  of  the  beUef 
in  causation,  which  again  he  regarded  as  a  case  of  our  intuitive  belief  in  the 
constancy  of  the  order  of  nature.  "  I  do  not,"  he  says,  (Lecture  xxiv. 
vol.  ii.  p.  11)  "  conceive  that  it  is  by  any  peculiar  intuition  we  are  led  to 
"  believe  in  the  existence  of  things  without.  I  consider  this  belief  as  the 
"  effect  of  that  more  general  intuition,  by  which  we  consider  a  new  con- 
"  sequent,  in  any  series  of  accustomed  events,  as  the  sign  of  a  new  ante- 
"  cedent,  and  of  that  equally  general  principle  of  association,  by  which 
"  feelings  that  have  frequently  co-existed,  flow  together  and  constitute  after- 
"  wards  one  complex  whole."  That  is,  he  thought  that  when  an  infant 
finds  the  motions  of  his  muscles,  which  have  been  accustomed  to  take  place 
unimpeded,  suddenly  stopped  by  what  he  will  afterwards  learn  to  call  the 
resistance  of  an  external  object,  the  infant  intuitively  (though  perhaps  not 
instantaneously)  believes  that  this  unexpected  phaBuomenon,  the  stopjiage 
of  a  series  of  sensations,  is  conjoined  with,  or  as  we  now  say,  caused  by 
the  presence  of  some  new  antecedent :  which,  not  beiKg  the  infant  himself, 
nor  a  state  of  his  sensations,  we  may  call  an  outward  object. 


ON    THE    BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL    WORLD.  213 

the  distinction  between  a  Natural  Realist  and  a  Cosmo- 
tbetic  Idealist  of  the  third  class,  be  that  the  latter 
believes  the  existence  of  the  external  object  to  be  infer- 
red from,  or  suggested  by,  our  sensations,  while  the 
former  holds  it  to  be  neither  the  one  nor  the  other,  but 
to  be  apprehended  in  consciousness  simultaneously  and 
co-ordinately  with  the  sensations,  Reid  was  as  much  a 
Cosmothetic  IdealifcCas  Brown.  The'  question  does  not 
concern  philosophy,  but  the  history  of  philosophy,  which 
is  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  strongest  point,  and  was  not  at  all 
a  strong  point  with  either  Brown  or  Beid  ;  but  the 
matter  of  fact  is  worth  the  few  pages  necessary  for 
clearing  it  up,  because  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  vast  and 
accurate  learning  goes  near  to  obtaining  for  his  state- 
ments, on  any  such  matter,  implicit  confidence,  and  it 
is  therefore  important  to  show  that  even  where  he  is 
strongest,  he  is  sometimes  wrong. 

In  the  severe  criticism  on  Brown  from  which  I  have 
quoted,  and  which,  though  in  some  respects  unjust,  in 
others  I  cannot  deny  to  be  well  merited,  some  of  the 
strongest  expressions  have  reference  to  the  gross  mis- 
understanding of  Reid,  of  which  Brown  is  alleged  to  have 
been  guilty  in  not  perceiving  him  to  have  been  a  Natural 
Realist.  "  We  proceed,"  says  our  author,*  "  to  consider 
"  the  greatest  of  all  Brown's  errors,  in  itself  and  in  its 
"  consequences,  his  misconception  of  the  cardinal  position 
"  of  Reid's  philosophy,  in  supposing  that  philosopher  as 
"  a  hypothetical  realist,  to  hold  with  himself  the  third 
"  form  of  the  representative  hypothesis,  and  not,  as  a 
"  natural  realist,  the  doctrine  ot  an  intuitive  Perception.'*. 
"  Brown'sf  transmutation  of  Reid  from  a  natural  to  a 
"  hypothetical  realist,  as  a  misconception  of  the  grand 
"  and  distinctive  tenet  of  a  school  by  one  even  of  its 
"  disciples,  is  without  a  parallel  in  the  whole  history 
"  of  philosophy  \  and  this  portentious  error  is  prolific  ; 
"  chimara  chivieBram  parit.  Were  the  evidence  of  the 
"  mistake  less  unambiguous,  we  should  be  disposed 
"  rather  to  question  our  own  perspicacity  than  to  tax  so 

♦  Discussions,  p.  68.  f  Ibid.  p.  56. 


214     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  ov  theories 

"  subtle  an  intellect  with  so  gross  a  blunder."  And  he 
did,  in  time,  feel  some  misgiving  as  to  his  '*'  own  perspi- 
cacity." When,  in  preparing  an  edition  of  Eeid,  he 
was  obliged  to  look  more  closely  into  that  author's  state- 
ments, we  find  a  remarkable  lowering  of  the  high  tone 
of  these  sentences  ;  and  he  felt  obliged,  in  revising  the 
paper  for  the  Discussions,  to  write  "  This  is  too  strong," 
after  a  passage  in  which  he  had  said  that*  "  Brown's 
"  interpretation  of  the  fundamental  tenet  of  Reid's  philo- 
"  sophy  is  not  a  simple  misconception,  but  an  absolute 
"  reversal  of  its  real  and  even  unatndiguom  import." 
Well  would  it  have  been  for  Brown's  reputation  if  all 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  attempts  to  bring  home  blunders  to 
him,  had  been  as  little  successful  as  this. 

In  the  work  in  which  Eeid  first  brought  his  opinions 
before  the  world,  the  "  Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind," 
his  language  is  so  unequivocally  that  of  a  Cosmothetic 
Idealist,  that  it  admits  of  no  mistake.  It  is  almost 
more  unambiguous  than  that  of  Brown  himself  The 
external  object  is  always  said  to  be  perceived  through 
the  medium  of  "  natural  signs :"  these  signs  being  our 
sensations,  interpreted  by  a  natural  instinct.  Our  sen- 
sations, he  says,t  belong  to  that  "  class  of  natural  signs 
"  which  .  .  though  we  never  before  had  any  notion  or 
"  conception  of  the  thing  signified,  do  suggest  it,  or 
"  conjure  it  up,  as  it  were,  by  a  natural  kind  of  magic, 
"  and  at  once  give  us  a  conception  and  create  a  belief  of 
"  it."  "I  takej  it  for  granted  that  the  notion  of  hard- 
"  ness,  and  the  belief  of  it,  is  first  got  by  means  of  that 
"  particular  sensation  which,  as  far  back  as  we  can 
"  remember,  does  invariably  suggest  it,  and  that,  if  we 
"  had  never  had  such  a  feeling,  we  should  never  have 
"  had  our  notion  of  hardness."  Again, §  "  when  a  coloured 
*'  body  is  presented,  there  is  a  certain  apparition  to  the 
"  eye,  or  to  the  mind,  which  we  have  called  t/ie  appearance 
"  of  colour.     Mr.   Locke  calls  it  an  idea,  and,  indeed,  it 

*  Discussions,  p.  60. 

f  Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind,  Works  (Hamilton's  ed.),  p.  122. 

X  Ibid.  §  Ibid.  p.  137. 


ON    THE    BELIEF  IN    AN    EXTERNAL    WORLD.  215 

"  may  be  called  so  with  the  greatest  propriety.  This 
"  idea  can  have  no  existence  but  when  it  is  perceived. 
"  It  is  a  kind  of  thought,  and  can  only  be  the  act  of  a 
"  percipient  or  thinking  being.  By  the  constitution  of 
"  our  nature,  we  are  led  to  conceive  this  idea  as  a  sign 
"  of  something  external,  and  are  impatient  till  we  learn 
"  its  meaning." 

I  must  be  excused  if  I  am  studious  to  prove,  by  an 
accumulation  of    citations,   that  these  ai-e   not    passing 
expressions  of   Reid,  but  the  deliberate  doctrine  of  his 
treatise.      "  I  think  it  appears  from  what  hath  been  said, 
"  that  there  are  natural  suggestions ;  particularly,  that 
"  sensation  suggests  the  notion  of  present  existence,  and 
"  the  belief  that   what   we  perceive  or  feel  does  now 
"  exist.  .  .  And,  in  like  manner,  certain  sensations  of 
"  touch,  by  the  constitution  of  our  nature,  suggest  to  us 
"  extension,  solidity,   and  motion."*     "  By  a^n  original 
'  pripciple  of  our    constitution,    a  certain   sensation  of 
"  touch  both  suggests  to  the  mind  the    conception    of 
"  hardness,  and  creates  the  belief   of   it:    or,    in  other 
"  words,  this  sensation  is  a  natural  sign  of  hardness/j|* 
"  The  word  gold  has    no    similitude    to   the    substance 
"  signified  by  it ;  nor  is  it  in  its  own  nature  more  tit  to 
"  signify  this  than  any  other  substance  ;  yet,   by  habit 
"  and  custom,  it  suggests  this  and    no  other.     In  like  i 
"  manner,   a  sensation  of  touch  suggests  hardness,  al-  j 
"  though  it  hath  neither  similitude  to  hardness,  nor,  as  j 
"  far  as  we   can  perceive,  any  necessary  connexion   with  j 
"  it.     The   diiierence  betwixt  these  two  signs  lies  only  > 
"  in  this — that,  in  the  first,  the  suggestion  is  the  effect 
"  of   habit  and    custom ;  in  the  second,  it  is  not   the 
"  effect  of  habit,  but  of  the   original  constitution  of  our 
"  minds."J     "  Extension,  therefore,  seems  to  be  a  quality 
"  sug.Qf^sted  to  us"  (the  italics  are  Keid's)  "  by  the  very 
"  same    sensations   which    suggest  the    other  qualities 
"  above* mentioned.     When  I  grasp  a  ball  in  my  hand, 
"  I~  perceive    it    at   once   hard,  figured,  and  extended,   \ 

*  Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind,  Works,  p.  111.       • 
t  Ibid.  p.  121.  X  Ibid.  p.  121. 


< 


216     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  op  theories 

f    "  The  feeling   is  very   simple,  and  hatli    not  the  least 
"  resemblance  to  any  quality  of  body.     Yet  it  suggests 
"  to  us  three  primary  qualities  perfectly  distinct  from  one 
"  another,  as  well  as  from  the  sensation  which  indicates 
'    "  them.     When  I  move  my  hand  along  the  table,  the 
"  feeling  is  so  simple  that  I  find  it  difficult  to  distinguish 
"  it  into  things  of  different  natures,  yet  it  immediately 
"  suggests  hardness,  smoothness,  extension,  and  motion 
"  —things  of  very  different  natures,  and  all  of  them  as 
"  distinctly  understood  as    the   feeling  which    suggests 
^    "  them."*     "  The    feelings    of   touch,     which    suggest 
"  primary  qualities,   have  no  names,  nor  are  they  ever 
'    "  reflected  upon.     They  pass  through  the  mind  instan- 
,    "  taneously,  and  serve  only  to  introduce  the  notion  and 
|-  "  belief  ot  external  things,  which   by  our  constitution, 
I    "  are   connected  with  them.     They   are   natural  signs, 
,   "  and  the  mind  immediately  passes  to  the  thing  signified, 
I   "  without  making   the  least  reflection  upon    the    sign, 
I   "or    observing    that    there    was    any    such    thing."! 
This    passage,    with    many    others   of    like  import.   Sir 
W.  Hamilton  might  usefully  have  meditated  on,  before 
he  laid   so  much  stress  on  the  testimony  of  conscious- 
ness that  the   apprehension  is  nol  through  the  medium 
of  a  sign. 

"  Let  a  man  press  his  hand  against  the  table — he  feels 
^  ''  it  hard.  But  what  is  the  meaning  ot  this  ?  The 
"  meaning  undoubtedly  is,  that  he  hath  a  certain  feeling 
"  of  touch,  from  which  he  concludes,  without  any  rea- 
"  soning  or  comparing  ideas,  that  there  is  something 
"  external  really  existing,  whose  parts  stick  so  firmly 
"  together,  that  they  cannot  be  displaced  without  con- 
"  siderable  force.  There  is  here  »&  feeling,  and  a  con- 
"  elusion  drawn  from    it,  or   some    way    suggested    by 

"it The  hardness  of  the  table  is  the   conclusion, 

'  "  the  feeling  is  the  medium  by  which  we  are  led  to  that 
y  "  conclusion."!  "  How^a  sensation  should  instantly  make 
-    1   "  us  conceive  and  believe  the  existence  of  an  exjbernal 

*  Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind,  Works,  p.  123. 
T  Ibid.  p.  lli'i.  t  Ibid,  p.  l}io. 


ON    THE   BELIEF   IN    AN    EXTERNAL   WORLD,  217 

"  thing  altogether  unlike  to  it,  I  do  not  pretend  to  knowj 
"  and  when  I  say  that  the  one  suggests  the  other,  I 
"  mean  not  to  explain  tiie  manner  of  their  connexion, 
"  but  to  express  a  fact,  which  every  one  may  be  conscious 
"  ol',  naniely,~tKat  "By  a  law  of  our  nature,  such  a  con-^ 
"  9£EM^^  ^^^  belief  constantly  and  immediately  follow 
"  ffie  sensation."*  "  Thefe  are  three  ways  in  which  the 
"  mind  passes  from  the  appearance  of  a  natural  sign  to 
"  the  conception  and  belief  of  the  thing  signified — by 
"  original  principles  of  our  constitution,  by  custom,  and 
**  by  reasoning.  Our  original  perceptions  are  got  in  the 
"  first  of  these  ways.  ...  In  the  first  of  these  ways, 
"  Nature,  by  means  of  the  sensations  of  touch,  informs 
"  us  of  the  hardness  and  softness  of  bodies ;  of  their 
*'  extension,  figure,  and  motion  ;  and  of  that  space  in 
"  which  they  move  and  are  placed."!  "  In  the  testi- 
"  mony  of  Nature  given  by  the  senses,  as  well  as  in 
"  human  testimony  given  by  language,  things  are  signi- 
"  fied  to  us  by  signs  :  and  in  one  as  well  as  the  other, 
"  the  mind,  either  by  original  principles  or  by  custom, 
"  passes  from  the  sign  to  the  conception  and  belief  of 
"  the  things  signified.  .  .  .  The  signs  in  original  per- 
"  ceptions  are  sensations,  of  which  Nature  hath  given 
"  us  a  great  variety,  suited  to  the  variety  of  the  things 
*'  signified  by  them.  Nature  hath  established  a  real  con- 
"  nexion  between  the  signs  and  the  things  signified^ 
"  and  Nature  hath  also  taught  us  the  interpretation  of 
"  the  signs — so  that,  previous  to  experience,  the  sign 
"  sjuggests  the  thing  signified,  and  creates  the  belief  of 
"  it.  1^  "  It  is  by  one  particular  principle  of  our  con-  ' 
"  stitution  that  certain  features  express  anger ;  and  by 
"  another  particular  principle,  that  certain  features  ex- 
"  press  benevolence.  It  is,  in  like  manner,  by  one  parti 
"  cular  principle  of  our  constitution  that  a  certain  sensa- 
**  tion  signifies  hardness  in  the  body  which  I  handle  ; 
*'  and  it  is  by  another  particular  principle  that  a  certain 
*'  sensation  signifies  motion  in  that  body."^ 

*  Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind,  Works,  p.  131. 
t  Ibid.  p.  laa.  J  Ibid.  pp.  194,  lyo.  §  Ibid.  p.  195. 


< 


218     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

I  doubt  if  it  would  be  possible  to  extract  from  Brown 
himself  an  equal  number  of  passages  expressing  as 
clearly  and  positively,  and  in  terms  as  irreconcilable 
with  any  other  opinion,  the  doctrine  which  our  author 
terms  the  third  form  of  Cosmothetic  Idealism ;  in  the 
exact  shape,  too,  in  which  Brown  held  it,  unencumbered 
by  the  gratuitous  addition  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
fastens  on  him,  that  the  sign  must  "  truly  represent " 
the  thing  signified, — a  notion  which  Eeid  takes  good 
care  that  he  shall  not  be  supposed  to  entertain,  since  he 
repeatedly  declares  that  there  is  no  resemblance  be- 
tween them.  That  lieid,  at  least  when  he  wrote  the 
Inquiry,  was  a  Cosmothetic  Idealist ;  that  up  to  that 
time  it  had  never  occurred  to  him  that  the  convictions 
of  the  existence  and  qualities  of  external  objects  could 
be  regarded  as  anything  but  suggestions  by,  and  con- 
clusions from,  our  sensations — is  too  obvious  to  be 
questioned  by  any  one  who  has  the  text  fresh  in  his 
recollection.  Accordingly  Sir  W.  Hamilton  acknow- 
ledges as  milch  in  his  edition  of  Eeid,  both  in  the  foot- 
notes and  in  the  appended  Dissertations.  After  restating 
his  own  doctrine,  that  our  natural  beliefs  assure  us  of 
outward  objects,  only  by  assuring  us  that  we  are  imme- 
diately conscious  of  them,  he  adds,*  "  lieid  himself  seems 
"  to  have  become  obscurely  aware  of  this  condition  :  and 
"  though  he  never  retracted  his  doctrine  concerning  the 
"  mere  suggestion  of  extension,  we  find  in  his  Essays  on 
"  the  Intellectual  Powers  assertions  in  regard  to  the 
"immediate  perception  of  external  things,  which  would 
"  tend  to  show  that  his  later  views  were  more  in  unison 
"  with  the  necessary  convictions  of  mankind."  And  in 
another  place f  he  says  of  the  doctrine  maintained  by 
Eeid  "  in  his  earlier  work,"  that  it  is  one  which  "  if  he 
"  did  not  formally  retract  in  his  later  writings,  he  did 
"  not  continue  to  profess."  It  is  hard  that  Brown  should 
be  charged  with  blundering  to  a  degree  which  is  "  por- 
tentous' and  "  without  a  parallel  in  the  whole  history  of 
philosophy,"  for  attributing  to  Eeid  an  opinion  which 

*  Foot-note  to  Eeid,  p.  129.  f  Dissertations  on  fleid,  p.  821. 


ON    THE    BELIEF    IN   AN    EXTERNAL   WORLD.  219 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  confesses  that  Eeid  maintained  in  one 
of  his  only  two  important  writings,  and  did  not  retract 
in  the  other.     But  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  still  more  wrong 
than  he  confesses.     He  is  in  a  mistake  when  he  says 
that  Keid,  though  he  did  not  retract  the  opinion,  did  not 
continue  to  profess  it.     For  some  reason,  not  apparent,  \)^ 
he  did  cease  to  employ  the  word  JSuggestion.     But  he  / 
continued  to  use  terms  equivalent  to  it.     "  Every  dif- 
'  ferent  perception  is  conjoined  with  a  sensation  that  is  ' 
'  proper  to  it.      T/ie  one  is  tlie  sign,  the  other  the  tiling 
'  signified."*    "  I  touch  the  table  gently  with  my  hand,  f 
'  and  I  teel  it  to  be  smooth,  hard,  and  cold.     These  a ro 
'  qualities  of  the  table  perceived  by  touch:  but  \  perceive 
them  by  means  of  a  sensation  which  indicates  them/'t 
'  Observing  that  the  agreeable  sensation  is  raised  when 

*  the  rose  is  near,  and  ceases  when  it  is  removed,  I  am 
'  led  by  my  nature  to  conclude  some  quality  to  be  in  the 
'  rose,  which  is  the  cause  of  this  sensation.  This  quality 
'  in  the  rose  is  the  object  perceived ;  and  that  act  of  m^ 
'  mindl)v  which  I  have  the  conviction  andbelief  of  this 

*  quality,  is  what  in  this  case  I  call  perception."!  Of 
this  passage  even  Sir  W.  Hamilton  honestly  says  in  a 
foot-note,  that  it  "  appears  to  be  an  explicit  disavowal  of 
the  doctrine  of  an  intuitive  or  immediate  perception." 
Again :  "  When  a  primary  quality  is  perceived,  the  sen- 
"  nation  immediately  leads  our  ihouyht  to  the  quality  signified 
"  by  it,  and  is  itself  forgot.  .  .  .  The  sensations  belonging 
"  to  primary  qualities  .  .  .  carry  the  thought  to  the  ex- 
"  ternal  object,  and  immediately  disappear  and  are  forgot. 
"  Nature  intended  them  only  as  signs;  and  when  they  have 
"  served  that  purpose  they  vanish." §  "  Nature  has  con- 
"  nected  our  perception  of  external  objects  with  certain 
"  sensations.  If  the  sensation  is  produced,  the  corresponding 
"  perception  foUows,  even  when  there  is  no  object,  and  in  \ 
"that  case  is  apt  to  deceive  us."||  "In  perception,  t 
"  whether  original  or  acquired,  there  is  something  which  j 
"  may  be  called  the  sign^  and  something  which  is  signified  I 

*  Essays  on  the  Intellectual  Powers,  Works,  p.  312. 
t  Ibid.  p.  311.        ;  Ibid.  p.  310.        §  Ibid.  p.  315.        |1  Ibid.  p.  320. 


< 


< 


220     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

"  to  ns,  or  hrouglit  to  our  knowledge  hy  that  sign.  In 
"  original  perception,  the  signs  are  the  various  sensations 
*'  which  are  produced  by  the  impressions  made  upon  our 
"  organs.  The  things  signified  are  the  objects  perceived 
"  in  consequence  of  those  sensations,  by  the  original 
"  constitution  of  our  nature.  Thus,  when  I  grasp  an 
"  ivory  ball  in  my  hand,  I  have  a  certain  sensation  of 
"  touch.  Although  this  sensation  be  in  the  mind,  and 
"  have  no  similitude  to  anything  material ;  yet,  by  the 
"  laws  of  my  constitution,  iA,  is  immediatelg  followed  by  the 
"  conception  and  belief,  that  there  is  in  my  hand  a  hard 
•*  smooth  body  of  a  spherical  figure,  and  about  an  inch 
*'  and  a  half  in  diameter.  This  belief  is  grounded  neither 
•*'  upon  reasoning,  nor  upon  experience ;  it  is  the  imme- 
"  diate  effect  of  my  constitution,  and  this  I  call  original 
"  perception.""^ 

All  these  are  as  unequivocal,  and  the  last  passage  as 
full  and  precise  a  statement  of  Cosmothetic  Idealism,  as 
any  in  the  Inquiry.  In  the  Dissertations  appended  to 
Reidjf  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  who  never  fails  in  candour, 
acknowledges  in  the  fullest  manner  the  inferences  which 
may  be  drawn  from  passages  like  these,  but  thinks  that 
they  are  balanced  by  others  which  "  seem  to  harmonize 
*'  exclusively  with  the  conditions  of  natural  presenta- 
*'  tionism,"!  and  on  the  whole  is  decidedly  §  of  opinion 
"  that,  as  the  great  end — the  governing  principle  of  Eeid's 
"  doctrine  was  to  reconcile  philosophy  with  the  neces- 
"  sary  convictions  of  mankind,  he  intended  a  doctrine 
*'  of  natural,  consequently  a  doctrine  of  presentative, 
"  realism  ;  and  that  he  would  have  at  once  surrendered 
"  as  erroneous,  every  statement  which  was  found  at 
"  variance  with  such  a  doctrine."  But  it  is  clear  that 
the  doctrine  of  perception  through  natural  signs  did  not, 
in  Beid's  opinion,  contradict  "  the  necessary  convictions 
of  mankind;"  being  brought  into  harmony  with  them 
by  his  doctrine,  that  the  signs,  after  they  have  served 

*  Essays  on  the  Intellectual  Powers,  p.  3?>2. 

t  Dissertations  on  Reid,  pp.  819-824  and  882-885. 

X  ibid.  p.  882.  §  ibid.  p.  820. 


ON    THE   BELIEF   IN   AN    EXTERNAL   WORLD.  221 

their  purpose,  are  "forgot,"  which,  as  he  conclusively 
shows  in  many  places,  it  was  both  natural  and  inevitable 
that  they  should  be.  The  passages  which  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  cites  as  inconsistent  with  any  doctrine  but 
Natural  Eealism,  are  those  in  which  Reid  affirms  that 
we  perceive  objects  immediately,  and  that  the  external 
things  which  really  exist  are  the  very  ones  which  we 
perceive.  But  Reid  evidently  did  not  think  these 
expressions  inconsistent  with  the  doctrine  that  the 
notion  and  belief  of  external  objects  are  irresistibly 
suggested  through  natural  signs.  Having  this  notion  L 
and  belief  irresistibly  suggested,  is  what  he  means  by  | 
perceiving  the  external  object.  He  says  so  in  more 
than  one  of  the  passages  I  have  just  quoted :  and  neither 
in  his  chapter  on  Perception,  nor  anywhere  else,  does  he 
speak  of  perception  as  implying  anything  more.  In  that 
chapter  he  says,*  "  If  we  attend  to  that  act  of  our  mind  A^ 
"  which  we  call  the  perception  of  an  external  object  of 
"  sense,  we  shall  tind  in  it  these  three  thingrs  :  First, 
"  some  conception  or  notion  of  the  object  perceived; 
"  Secondly,  a  strong  and  irresistible  conviction  and  belief 
"  ofits  present  existence ;  and.  Thirdly,  that  this  con- 
"  victionTand  belief  are  immediate,  and  not  the  effect  of 
"  reasoning."  We  see  in  this  as  in  a  hundred  other 
places,  what  Reid  meant  when  he  said  that  our  perception  i'<i\v^ 
ot  outward  objects  is  immediate.  He  did  not  mean  that 
it  is  not  a  conviction  suggested  by  something  else,  but 
only  that  the  conviction  is  not  the  effect  of  reasoning, 
"This  convictionf  is  not  only  irresistible,  but  it  ig 
"  immediate ;  that  is,  it  is  not  by  a  train  of  reason iii^ 
"  and  argumentation  that  welcome  to  be  convinced  oi  -- 
"  tlie^  existence  of  what  we  perceive?^  As  Nature  has 
giveii  us  the  signs,  so  it  is  by  an  original  law  of  our 
nature  that  we  are  enabled  to  interpret  them.  When 
Reid  means  anything  but  this  in  contending  for  an 
immediate  perception  of  objects,  he  merely  means  to 
deny  that  it  takes  place  through  an  image  in  the  brain 

*  Essay 8  on  tlie  Intellectual  Powers,  Essay  ii.  chap.  v.  p.  258. 
t  Same  Essay,  p.  259. 


0) 


222     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories 

or  in  the  mind,  as  maintained  by  Cosmothetic  Idealists 
of  the  first  or  the  second  class. 

The  only  plausible  argument  produced  by  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  in  proof  of  Reid's  Natural  Realism,  and 
against  his  having  held,  as  Brown  thought,  Brown's 
own  opinion,  is,  that  when  in  the  speculations  of  Arnauld 
he  had  before  him  exactly  the  same  opinion,  he  failed  to 
recognise  it.*  But  on  a  careful  examination  of  Reid's 
criticism  on  Arnauld,  it  will  be  seen,  that  as  long  as 
Reid  had  to  do  with  Arnauld's  direct  statement  of  his 
opinion,  he  found  nothing  in  it  different  from  his  own  ; 
but  was  puzzled,  and  thought  that  Arnauld  attempted 
to  unite  inconsistent  opinions,  because,  after  throwing 
over  the  "ideal  tlieory,"  and  saying  that  the  only  real 
ideas  are  our  perceptions,  he  maintained  that  it  is  still 
true,  in  a  sense,  that  we  do  not  perceive  things  directly, 
but  through  our  ideas.  What !  asks  Reid,  do  we  perceive 
things  through  our  perceptions  ?  But  if  we  merely  put 
the  word  sensations  instead  of  perceptions,' the  doctrine 
is  exactly  that  of  Reid  in  the  Inquiry — that  we  perceive 
things  through  our  sensations.  •  Most  probably  Arnauld 
meant  this,  but  was  not  so  understood  by  Reid.  If  he 
meant  anything  else,  his  opinion  was  not  the  same  as 
Reid's,  and  we  need  no  explanation  of  Reid's  not  recog- 
nising it. 

One  of  the  collateral  indications  that  Reid's  opinion 
agreed  with  Brown's,  and  not  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton's, 
is  that  in  treating  this  question  he  seldom  or  never  uses 
the  word  Knov^^ledge,  but  only  Belief.  On  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  doctrine,  the  distinction  between  these  two 
terms,  however  vaguely  and  mistily  conceived  by  him, 
is  indispensable.  The  total  absence  of  any  recognition 
of  it  in  Reid,  !<hows  that  of  the  two  opinions,  if  there 
was  one  which  he  had  never  conceived  the  possibility  of, 
it  was  not  Brown's,  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  supposes,  but 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's.     In  our  author's  mind  this  indica- 

*  Same  Essay,  chap.  xiii.  For  Sir  "W.  Hamilton's  remarks,  see 
Lectures,  ii.  60-53 ;  Discussions,  pp.  76-77 ;  and  Dissertations  on  Keid, 
p.  823. 


ON    THE   BELIRP    IN    AN    EXTERNAL    WORLD.  223 

tion  ought  to  have  decided  the  question:  for  in  the 
case  of  another  philosopher  he,  on  precisely  the  same 
evidence,  brings  in  a  verdict  of  Oosmothetic  Idealism. 
Krug's  system,  he  says,*  as  first  promulgated,  "  was, 
"  like  Kant's,  a  mere  Cosmothetic  Idealism ;  for  while 
*'  he  allowed  a  knowledge  of  the  internal  world,  he  only 
"  allowed  a  belief  of  the  external." 

It  is  true,  Reid  did  not  believe  in  what  onr  author 
terms  ''representative  perception,"  if  by  this  be  meant 
perception  through  an  image  in  the  mind,  supposed,  like 
the  picture  of  a  fact  in  memory,  to  be  like  its  original. 
But  neither  (as  I  have  repeatedly  observed)  did  Brown. 
What  Brown  held  was  exactly  the  doctrine  of  Reid  in  >• 
the  passages  that  I  have  extracted.  He  thought  that  j^^ 
certain  sensations,  irresistibly,  and  by  a  law  of  our  nature, 
suggest,  without  any  process  of  reasoning,  and  without 
the  intervention  of  any  tertium  quid,  the  notion  .of 
som(^thing  external,  and  an  invincible  belief  in  its  real 
existence.  If  representative  perception  be  this,  both 
Reid  and  Brown  believed  in  it :  if  anything  else,  Brown 
believed  in  it  no  more  than  Reid.  Not  only  was  Reid  a 
Cosmothetic  Idealist  of  Brown's  exact  type,  but  in  stating 
his  own  doctrine,  he  has  furnished,  as  far  as  I  am  aware, 
the  clearest  and  best  statement  extant  of  their  common 
opinion.  They  diffsred,  indeed,  as  to  our  having,  in 
this  or  in  any  other  manner,  an  intuitive  perception  of 
any  of  the  attributes  of  objects ;  Reid,  like  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  affirming,  while  Brown  denied,  that  we  have 
a  direct  intuition  of  the  Primary  Qualities  of  bodies. 
But  Brown  did  not  deny,  nor  would  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
accuse  him  of  denying,  the  wide  difference  between  his 
opinion  and  Reid's  on  this  latter  point. 

Before  closing  this  chapter,  I  will  notice  the  curious 
fact,  that  after  insisting  with  so  much  emphasis  upon 
the  recognition  of  an  Ego  and  a  Non-ego  as  an  element 
in  all  consciousness,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  obliged  to  admit 
that  the  distinction  is  in  certain  cases  a  mistake,  and 
tiiat  our  consciousness  sometimes  recognises  a  Non-ego 

*  Dissertations  on  Eeid,  p.  797. 


224     SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  review  of  theories. 

where  there  is  only  an  Ego.  It  is  a  doctrine  of  his, 
repeated  in  many  parts  of  his  works,  that  in  our  internal 
consciousness  there  is  no  non-ego.  Even  the  remem- 
brance of  a  past  fact,  or  the  mental  image  of  an  absent 
object,  is  not  a  thing  separable  or  distinguishable  from 
the  mind's  act  in  remembering,  but  is  another  name  for 
that  act  itself.  Now  it  is  certain,  that  in  thinking  of 
an  absent  or  an  imaginary  object,  we  naturally  imagine 
ourselves  to  be  thinking  of  an  objective  something,  dis- 
tinguishable from  the  thinking  act.  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
being  obliged  to  acknowledge  this,  resolves  the  difficulty 
in  the  very  manner  for  which  he  so  often  rebukes  other 
thinkers — by  representing  this  apparent  testimony  of 
consciousness  as  a  kind  of  illusion,  "  The  object,"  he 
says,*  "  is  in  this  case  given  as  really  identical  with  the 
"  conscious  ego,  but  still  consciousness  distinguishes  it, 
"  as  an  accident  from  the  ego,  as  the  subject  of  that 
"accident:  it  projects,  as  it  were,  this  subjective  phae- 
"  nomenon  from  itself, — views  it  at  a  distance, — in  a 
"  word,  objectifies  it."  But  if,  in  one-half  of  the  domain 
of  consciousness — the  internal  half — it  is  in  the  power 
of  consciousness  to  "  project "  out  of  itself  what  is  merely 
one  of  its  own  acts,  and  regard  it  as  external  and  a  non- 
ego,  why  are  those  accused  of  declaring  consciousness  a 
lie,  who  think  that  this  may  possibly  be  the  case  with 
the  other  half  of  its  domain  also,  and  that  the  non-ego 
altogether  may  be  but  a  mode  in  which  the  mind  repre- 
sents to  itself  the  possible  modifications  of  the  ego  ? 
How  the  truth  stands  in  respect  to  this  matter  I  will 
endeavour,  in  the  following  chapter,  to  investigate.  For 
the  present,  I  content  myself  with  asking,  why  the  same 
liberty  in  the  interpretation  of  Consciousness,  which 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  own  doctrine  cannot  dispense  with, 
should  be  held  to  be  an  insurmountable  objection  to  the 
counter  doctrine. 

*  Lectures,  ii.  432. 


225 


CHAPTER  Xr. 


THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL   THEORY    OF    THE    BELIEF    IN    AN 
EXTERNAL    WORLD. 

AVe  have  seen  Sir  W.  Hamilton  at  work  on  the  question 
of  the  reality  of  Matter,  by  the  introspective  method, 
and,  as  it  seems,  with  little  result.  Let  us  now  approach 
the  same  subject  by  the  psychological.  I  proceed, 
therefore,  to  state  the  case  of  those  who  hold  that  the 
belief  in  an  external  world  is  not  intuitive,  but  an 
acquired  product. 

This  theory  postulates  the  following  psychological 
truths,  all  of  which  are  proved  by  experience,  and  are 
not  contested,  though  their  force  is  seldom  adequately 
felt,  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  the  other  thinkers  of  the 
introspective  school. 

It  postulates,  first,  that  the  human  mind  is  capable  of 
Expectation.  In  other  words,  that  after  having  had 
actual  sensations,  we  are  capable  of  forming  the  concep- 
tion of  Possible  sensations ;  sensations  which  we  are  not 
feeling  at  the  present  moment,  but  which  we  might  feel, 
and  should  feel  if  certain  conditions  were  present,  the 
nature  of  which  conditions  we  have,  in  many  cases, 
learnt  by  experience. 

It  postulates,  secondly,  the  laws  of  the  Association  of 
Ideas.  So  far  as  we  are  here  concerned,  these  laws  are 
the  following:  1st.  Similar  phsenomena  tend  to  be  thought 
of  together.  2nd7  Thaenomena  which  have  either  been 
experienced  or  conceived  in  close  contiguity  to  one 
another,  tend  to  be  thought  of  together.  The  conti- 
guity is  of  two  kinds ;  simultaneity,  and  immediate 
succession.       Facts   which    have   been   experienced    or 

9. 


226  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL   THEORY    OF    THE 

thought  of  simultaneously,    recall  the  thought  of  one 
another.       Of  facts   which   have   been   experienced   or 
thought  of  in  immediate  succession,  the  antecedent,  or 
the  thought  of  it,  recalls  the  thought  of  the  consequent, 
t  bat   not   conversely.       3rd.    Associations  produced   by 
I  contiguity  become  more  certain  and  rapid  by  repetition. 
1  When  two  phsenomena  have  been  very  often  experienced 
J  in  conjunction,  and   have    not,  in  any  single   instance, 
I  occurred  separately  either  in  experience  or  in  thought, 
:  there  is  produced  between  them   what  has  been  called 
j  Inseparable,  or  less  correctly,  Indissoluble  Association  : 
I  by  which  is  not  meant  that  the  association  must  inevitably 
I  last  to  the  end  of  life — that  no  subsequent  experience  or 
j  process  of  thought  can  possibly  avail  to  dissolve  it ;  but 
I  only  that  as  long  as  no  such  experience  or  process  of 
!  thought  has  taken  place,  the  association  is  irresistible  ; 
I  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  think  the  one  thing  disjoined 
i  from  the  other.     4th.  When  an  association  has  acquired 
this  character  of  inseparability — when  the  bond  between 
the  two   ideas  has   been  thus  firmly  riveted,  not   only 
does  the  idea  called   up  by  association  become,  in  our 
consciousness,  inseparable  from  the  idea  which  suggested 
it,  but  the  facts  or  phsenomena  answering  to  those  ideas 
come  at  last  to  seem  inseparable  in  existence  :    things 
^  I  which  we  are  unable  to  conceive  apart,  appear  incapable 
l^       of  existing  apart ;  and  the  belief  we  have  in  their  co- 
existence, though  really  a  product  of  experience,  seems 
intuitive.     Innumerable  examples  might  be  given  of  this 
law.     One  of  the  most  familiar,  as  well   as   the   most 
striking,  is  that  of  our  acquired  perceptions  of  sight. 
Even  those  who,  with  Mr.  Bailey,  consider  the  percep- 
tion of  distance  by  the  eye  as  not  acquired,  but  intuitive, 
admit  that  there  are  many  perceptions  of  sight  which, 
though  instantaneous  and  unhesitating,  are  not  intuitive. 
What  we  see  is   a  very  minute  fragment  of  what  we 
think  we  see.    We  see  artificially  that  one  thing  is  hard, 
another  soft.     We  see  artificially  that  one  thing  is  hot, 
another  cold.    We  see  artificially  that  what  we  see  is  a 
book,  or   a  stone,  each    of  these  being   not  merely  an 


BELIEF    IN    AN   EXTERNAL    WORLD. 


227 


inference,  but  a  heap  of  inferences,  from  the  signs 
which  we  see,  to  things  not  visible.  We  see,  and 
cannot  help  seeing',  what  we  have  learnt  to  infer,  even 
when  we  know  that  the  inference  is  erroneous,  and  that 
the  apparent  perception  is  deceptive.  We  cannot  help 
seeing  the  moon  larger  when  near  the  horizon,  tliousrh 
we  know  that  she  is  of  precisely  her  usual  size.  We 
cannot  help  seeing  a  mountain  as  nearer  to  us  and  of 
less  height,  when  we  see  it  through  a  more  than  ordi- 
narily transparent  atmosphere. 

Setting  out  from  these  premises,  the  Psychological 
Theory  maintains,  that  there  are  associations  naturally 
and   even    necessarily   generated   by  the   order  of  our 
sensations  and  of  our  reminiscences  of  sensation,  which, 
supposing  no   intuition  of  an   external  world    to  have 
existed  in  consciousness,  would  inevitably  generate  the 
belief,  and  would  cause  it  to  be  regarded  as  an  intuition. 
What  is  it  we  mean,  or  what  is  it  which  leads  us  to 
say,  that  the  objects  we  perceive  are  external  to  us,  and 
not  a  part  of  our  own  thoughts  ?     We  mean,  that  there 
is  concerned   in  our  perceptions  something  which  exists 
when  we  are  not  thinking  of  it ;  which  existed  before 
we  had  ever  thought  of  it,  and  would  exist  if  we  were 
annihilated ;  and  further,  that  there  exists  things  which  ' 
we   never   saw,    touched,   or   otherwise   perceived,    and 
things  which  never  have  been  perceived  by  man.     This  | 
idea  of  something  which  is  distinguished  from  our  fleet- 
ing impressions  by  what,  in  Kantian  language,  is  called 
Perdurability  ;   something  which   is  fixed  and  the  same, 
while   our  impressions   vary ;    something    which    exists 
whether  we  are  aware  of  it  or  not,  and  which  is  always 
square  (or  of  some  other  given  figure)  whether  it  appears 
to  us  square  or  round — constitutes  altogether  our  idea 
of  external  substance.     Whoever  can  assign  an  origin 
to   this  complex  conception,  has  accounted  for  what  we 
mean  by  the  belief  in  matter.     Now  all  this,  according  \ 
to  the  Psychological  Theory,  is  but  the  form  impressed  ! 
by  the  known  laws  of  association,  upon  the^  conception  j 
or  notion,  obtained  by  experience^  of  Contmgeiit  Sensar,! 

ci  2 


< 


'=*: 


■^--^ 


228  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL   THEORY    OP    THE 

tions  ;  by  which  are  meant,  sensations  that  are  not  in 
our  present  consciousness,  and  individually  never  were 
in  our  consciousness  at  all,  but  which  in  virtue  of  the 
laws  to  which  we  have  learnt  by  experience  that  our 
sensations  are  subject,  we  know  that  we  should  have 
felt  under  given  supposable  circumstances,  and  under 
these  same  circumstances,  might  still  feel. 

I  see  a  pie(;e  of  white  paper  on  a  table.  I  go  into 
another  room.  If  the  phgenomenon  always  followed  me, 
or  if,  when  it  did  not  follow  me,  I  believed  it  to  dis- 
appear e  rerum  natnrd,  I  should  not  believe  it  to  be  an 
external  object.  I  should  consider  it  as  a  phantom — a 
mere  affection  of  my  senses  :  I  should  not  believe  that 
there  had  been  any  Body  there.  But,  though  I  have 
ceased  to  see  it,  I  am  persuaded  that  the  paper  is  still 
there.  1  no  longer  have  the  sensations  which  it  gave 
me ;  but  I  believe  that  when  I  again  place  myself  in  the 
circumstances  in  which  I  had  those  sensations,  that  is, 
when  I  go  again  into  the  room,  I  shall  again  have 
them  ;  and  further,  that  there  has  been  no  intervening 
moment  at  which  this  would  not  have  been  the  case. 
Owing  to  this  property  of  my  mind,  my  conception  of 
the  world  at  any  given  instant  consists,  in  only  a  small 
proportion,  of  present  sensations.  Of  these  I  may  at 
the  time  have  none  at  all,  and  they  are  in  any  case  a 
most  insignificant  portion  of  the  whole  which  I  appre- 
hend. The  conception  I  form  of  the  world  existing  at 
any  moment,  comprises,  along  with  the  sensations  1  am 
feeling,  a  countless  variety  of  possibilities  of  sensation  : 
namely,  the  whole  of  those  which  past  observation  tells 
me  that  I  could,  under  any  supposable  circumstances, 
experience  at  this  moment,  together  with  an  indefinite 
and  illimitable  multitude  of  others  which  though  I  do 
not  know  that  I  could,  yet  it  is  possible  that  1  might, 
experience  in  circumstances  not  known  to  me.  These 
various  possibilities  are  the  important  thing  to  me  in 
the  world.  My  present  sensations  are  generally  of  little 
importance,  and  are  moreover  fugitive  :  the  possibilities, 
on  the  contrary,  are  permanent,  which  is  the  character 


BELIEF   IN    AN    EXTERNAL    WORLD.  229 

that  mainly  distinguishes  our  idea  of  Substance  or 
Matter  irom  our  notion  of  sensation.  These  possibilities, 
which  are  conditional  certainties,  need  a  special  name  to 
distinguish  them  from  mere  vague  possibilities,  which 
experience  gives  no  warrant  for  reckoning  upon.  Now,  \ 
as  soon  as  a  distinguishing  name  is  given,  though  it  be 
only  to  the  same  thing  regarded  in  a  different  aspect, 
one  of  the  most  familiar  experiences  of  our  mental  nature 
teaches  us,  that  the  different  name  comes  to  be  considered 
as  the  name  of  a  different  thing. 

There  is  another  important  peculiarity  of  these  certi- 
fied or  guaranteed  possibilities  of  sensation ;  namely, 
that  they  have  reference,  not  to  single  sensations,  but  to 
sensations  joined  together  in  groups.  When  we  think 
of  anything  as  a  material  substance,  or  body,  we  either 
have  had,  or  we  think  that  on  some  given  supposition 
we  should  have,  not  some  one  sensation,  but  a  great  and 
even  an  indefinite  number  and  variety  of  sensations, 
generally  belonging  to  different  senses,  but  so  linked 
together,  that  the  presence  of  one  announces  the  possible 
presence  at  the  very  same  instant  of  any  or  all  of  the 
rest.  In  our  mind,  therefore,  not  only  is  this  particular 
Possibility  of  sensation  invested  with  the  quality  of 
permanence  when  we  are  not  actually  feeling  any  of  the 
sensations  at  all ;  but  when  we  are  feeling  some  of  them, 
the  remaming  sensations  of  the  group  are  conceived  by 
us  in  the  form  of  Present  Possibilities,  which  might  be 
realized  at  the  very  moment.  And  as  this  happens  in 
turn  to  all  of  them,  the  group  as  a  whole  presents  itself  to 
the  mind  as  permanent,  in  contrast  not  solely  with  the 
temporal  iness  of  my  bodily  presence,  but  also  with  the 
temporary  character  of  each  of  the  sensations  composing 
the  group ;  in  other  words,  as  a  kind  of  permanent  \ 
substratum,  under  a  set  of  passing  experiences  or 
manifestations :  which  is  another  leading  character  of 
our  idea  of  substance  or  matter,  as  distinguished  from 
sensation. 

Let  us   now  take  into   consideration   another  of  the 
general  characters  of"  our  experience,  namely,  that   in 


230 


THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF   THE 


addition  to  fixed  groups,  we  also  recognise  a  fixed  Order 
in  our  sensations  ;  an  Order  of  succession,  which,  when 
^^V"  (      ascertained  by  observation,  giv^es  rise  to  the   ideas    of 
Cause  and  Effect,  according  to  what  1  hold  to  be  the  true^ 
theory  of  that  relation,  and  is  on  any  theory  the  source 
of  all  our  knowledge  what  causes  produce  what  effects. 
'     Now,  of  what  nature  is  this  fixed  order  among  our  sensa- 
tions ?  It  is  a  constancy  of  antecedence  and  sequence.  But 
the  constant  antecedence  and  sequence  do  not  generally 
.exist  between  one  actual  sensation  and  another.     Very 
few  such   sequences  are  presented  to  us  by  experience. 
In  almost  all  the  constant  sequences  which   occur  in 
I  Nature,  the  antecedence  and  consequence  do  not  obtain 
\\  between   sensations,  but   between  the  groups  we  have 
I  been  speaking  about,  of  which  a  ver}^  small  portion  is 
actual  sensation,  the  greater  part  being  permanent  pos- 
sibilities of  sensation,  evidenced  to  us   by  a  small  and 
variable  number  of  sensations  actually  present.     Hence, 
our  ideas  of  causation,  power,  activity,  do  not  become 
connected  in  thoujrht  with    our  sensations  as  aclual  at 
all,  save  in  the  few  physiological  cases  where  these  figure 
by   themselves    as   the    antecedents    in     some    uniform 
sequence.      Those   ideas   become    connected,    not   with 
sensations,  but  with  groups  of  possibilities  of  sensation. 
The  sensations  conceived  do  not,  to  our  habitual  thoughts, 
present  themselves  as  sensations   actually  experienced, 
inasmuch  as   not  only  any  one  or  any  number  of  them 

>may  be  supposed  absent,  but  none  of  them  need  be 
present.  We  find  that  the  modifications  which  are 
taking  place  more  or  less  regularly  in  our  possibilities  of 
sensation,  are  mostly  quite  independent  of  our  conscious- 
ness, and  of  our  presence  or  absence.  Whether  we  are 
asleep  or  awake  the  fire  goes  out,  and  puts  an  end  to 
one  particular  possibility  of  warmth  and  light.  Whether 
we  are  present  or  absent  the  corn  ripens,  and  brings  a 
new  possibility  of  food.  Hence  we  speedily  learn  to 
think  of  Nature  as  made  up  solely  of  these  groups  of 
possibilities,  and  the  active  force  in  Nature  as  manifested 
in  the  modification  of  some  of  these  by  others.     The 


K 


BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL  WORLD.  231 

sensations,  though  the  original  foundation  of  the  whole, 
come  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  sort  of  accident  depending 
on  us,  and  the  possibilities  as  much  more  real  than  the 
actual  sensations,  nay,  as  the  very  realities  of  which 
these  are  only  the  representations,  appearances,  or  effects. 
When  this  state  of  mind  has  been  arrived  at,  then,  and 
from  that  time  forward,  we  are  never  conscious  of  a 
present  sensation  without  instantaneously  referring  it 
to  some  one  of  the  groups  of  possibilities  into  which  a 
sensation  of  that  particular  description  enters;  and  if 
we  do  not  yet  know  to  what  group  to  refer  it,  we  at 
least  feel  an  irresistible  conviction  that  it  must  belong 
to  some  group  or  other;  i.e.  that  its  presence  proves 
the  existence,  here  and  now,  of  a  great  number  and 
variety  of  possibilities  of  sensation,  without  which  it 
would  not  have  been.  The  whole  set  of  sensations  as 
possible,  form  a  permanent  background  to  any  one  or 
more  of  them  that  are,  at  a  given  moment,  actual ;  and 
the  possibilities  are  conceived  as  standing  to  the  actual 
sensations  in  the  relation  of  a  cause  to  its  effects,  or  of 
canvas  to  the  figures  painted  on  it,  or  of  a  root  to  the  o*' 
trunk,  leaves,  and  flowers,  or  of  a  substratum  to  that  ^' 
which  is  spread  over  it,  or,  in  transcendental  language, 
of  Matter  to  Form. 

When  this  point  has  been  reached,  the  Permanent 
Possibilities  in  question  have  assumed  such  unlikeness 
of  aspect,  and  such  difference  of  apparent  relation  to  us, 
from  any  sensations,  that  it  would  be  contrary  to  all  we 
know  of  the  constitution  of  human  nature  that    they 
should  not  be  conceived  as,  and  believed  to  be,  at  least 
as  different  from  sensations  as  sensations  are  from  one 
another.     Their  groundwork  in  sensation  is  forgotten, 
and  they  are  supposed  to  be  something  intrinsically  dis- 
tinct from  it.      We  can  withdraw  ourselves  from  any  of  I 
our  (external)  sensations,  or  we  can  be  withdrawn  from  ] 
them  by  some  other  agency.     But  though  the  sensations  j 
cease,    the   possibilities  remain  in   existence ;    they  are  j 
independent  of  our  will,  our  presence,  and  everything  ( 
which  belongs  to  us.     We  find,  too,  that  they  belong  as  1 


232  THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF    THE 

t  much  to  other  human  or  sentient  beings  as  to  ourselves. 
I  We  find  other  people  grounding  their  expectations  and 
conduct  upon  the  same  permanent  possibilities  on  which 
•  we  ground  ours.     But  we  do  not  find  them  experiencing 
the  same  actual  sensations.     Other  people  do  not  have 
(  our  sensations  exactly  when  and  as  we  have  them  :  but 
■  they  have  our  possibilities  of  sensation ;  whatever  indi- 
cates a  present  possibility  of  sensations  to  ourselves,  in- 
dicates a  present  possibility  of  similar  sensations  to  them, 
;  except  so  far  as  their  organs  of  sensation    may   vary 
j  from  the  type  of  ours.     This  puts  the  final  seal  to  our 
'   conception  of  the  groups  of  possibilities  as  the  funda- 
mental reality  in  Nature.     The  permanent  possibilities 
are  common  to  us  and  to  our  fellow-creatures  ;  the  actual 
i   sensations  are  not.     That  which    other   people  become 
I   aware  of  when,  and  on  the  same  grounds,  as  1  do,  seems 
I   more  real  to  me  than  that  which  they  do  not  know  of 
unless  I  tell  them.     The  world  of  Possible  Sensations 
,   succeeding  one  another  according  to  laws,  is  as  much 
in  other  beings  as  it  is  in  me  ;  it  has  therefore  an  existence 
j  outside  me  ;  it  is  an  External  World. 

If  this  explanation  of  the  origin  and  growth  of  the 
idea  of  Matter,  or  External  Nature,  contains  nothing  at 
variance  with  natural  laws,  it  is  at  least  an  admissible 
I  supposition,  that  the  element  of  Non-ego  which  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  regards  as  an  original  datum  of  consciousness, 
%  and  which  we  certainly  do  find  in  what  we  now  call  our 
consciousness,  may  not  be  one  of  its  primitive  elements — 
may  not  have  existed  at  all  in  its  first  manifestations. 
But  if  this  supposition  be  admissible,  it  ought,  on  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  principles,  to  be  received  as  true.  The 
first  of  the  laws  laid  down  by  him  for  the  interpretation 
of  Consciousness,  the  law  (as  he  terms  it)  of  Parcimony, 
forbids  to  suppose  an  original  principle  of  our  nature  in 
order  to  account  for  phajnomena  which  admit  of  possible 
explanation  from  known  causes.  If  the  supposed  in- 
gredient of  consciousness  be  one  which  might  grow  up 
(though  we  cannot  prove  that  it  did  grow  up)  through 
later  experience  -,  and  if,  when  it  had  so  grown  up,  it 


BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL    WORLD.  233 

would,  by  known  laws  of  our  nature,  appear  as  completely 
intuitive  as  our  sensations  themselves ;  we  are  bound, 
according  to  SSir  W.  Hamilton's  and  all  sound  philosophy, 
to  assign  to  it  that  origin.  Where  there  is  a  known 
cause  adequate  to  account  for  a  phsenomenon,  there  is 
no  justification  for  ascribing  it  to  an  unknown  one.  And 
what  evidence  does  Consciousness  furnish  of  the  intui- 
tiveness  of  an  impression,  except  instantaneousness, 
apparent  simplicity,  and  unconsciousness  on  our  part  of 
how  the  impression  came  into  our  minds  ?  These 
features  can  only  prove  the  impression  to  be  intuitive, 
on  the  hypothesis  that  there  are  no  means  of  accounting 
for  them  otherwise.  If  they  not  only  might,  but 
naturally  would,  exist,  even  on  the  supposition  that  it 
is  not  intuitive,  we  must  accept  the  conclusion  to  which 
we  are  led  by  the  Psychological  Method,  and  which  the 
Introspective  Method  furnishes  absolutely  nothing  to 
contradict.  ^ 

Matter,  then,  may  be  defined,  a  Permanent  Possibility  1  ^  L  ^ 
of  Sensation.      If  I  am  asked,   whether  I   believe  inj^ux""^ 
matter,    I    ask   whether    the    questioner   accepts   this  • 
definition  of  it.     If  he  does,  I  believe  in  matter:  and  1 
so  do  all  Berkeleians.     In  any  other  sense  than  this,  I 
do  not.     But   I  affirm  with  confidence,  that  this  con-  1 
ception  of  Matter  includes  the  whole  meaning  attached 
to  it  by  the  common  world,  apart  from  philosophical, 
and  sometimes  from  theological,  theories.     The  reliance  | 
of  mankind  on  the  real  existence  of  visible  and  tangible  I 
objects,  means  reliance  on  the  reality  and  permanence  of 
Possibilities  of  visual  and  tactual  sensations,  when  no  ; 
such  sensations  are  actually  experienced.     We  are  war-  ' 
ranted  in  believing  that  this  is  the  meaning  of  Matter 
in  the  minds  of  many  of  its  most  esteemed  metaphysical 
champions,  though  they  themselves  would  not  admit  as 
much  :  for  example,  of  lieid,  Stewart,  and  Brown.     For 
these  three  philosophers  alleged  that  all  mankind,  in- 
cluding Berkeley  and  Hume,  really  believed  in  Matter, 
inasmuch  as  unless  they  did,  they  would  not  have  turned 
aside  to  save  themselves  from  running  against  a  post. 


234  THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL   THEORY   OF  THE 

Now  all  which  this  manoeuvre  really  proved  is,  that  they 
believed  in  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation.  We 
have  therefore  the  unintentional  sanction  of  these  three 
eminent  defenders  of  the  existence  of  matter,  foraffirming, 
that  to  believe  in  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation 
is  believing  in  Matter.  It  is  hardly  necessary,  after  such 
authorities,  to  mention  Dr.  Johnson,  or  any  one  else 
who  resorts  to  the  argumentum,  baculinum  of  knocking  a 
stick  against  the  ground.  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  a  far  subtler 
thinker  than  any  of  these,  never  reasons  in  this  manner. 
He  never  supposes  that  a  disbeliever  in  what  he  means 
by  Matter,  ought  in  consistency  to  act  in  any  different 
mode  from  those  who  believe  in  it.  He  knew  that  the 
belief  on  which  all  the  practical  consequences  depend,  is 
tlie  belief  in  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation,  and 
that  if  nobody  believed  in  a  material  universe  in  any 
other  sense,  life  would  go  on  exactly  as  it  now  does.  He, 
however,  did  believe  in  more  than  this,  but,  I  think, 
only  because  it  had  never  occurred  to  him  that  mere 
Possibilities  of  Sensation  could,  to  our  artificial ized  con- 
sciousness, present  the  character  of  objectivity  which,  as 
we  have  now  shown,  they  not  only  can,  but  unless  the 
known  laws  of  the  human  mind  were  suspended,  must 
necessarily,  present. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  objected,  that  the  very  possibility 
of  framing  such  a  notion  of  Matter  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
— the  capacity  in  the  human  mind  of  imagining  an 
external  world  which  is  anything  more  than  what  the 
Psychological  Theory  makes  it — amounts  to  a  disproof 
of  the  theory.  If  (it  may  be  said)  we  had  no  revelation 
in  consciousness,  ot  a  world  which  is  not  in  some  way  or 
other  identified  with  sensation,  we  should  be  unable  to 
have'  the  notion  of  such  a  world.  If  the  only  ideas 
we  had  of  external  objects  were  ideas  of"  our  sensations, 
supplemented  by  an  acquired  notion  of  permanent  pos- 
sibilities of  sensation,  we  must  (it  is  thought)  be  in- 
capable ot*  conceiving,  and  therefore  still  more  incapable 
of  fancying  that  we  perceive,  things  which  are  not 
sensations  at  all.     It  being  evident  however  that  some 


BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL   WORLD,  235 

philosophers  believe  this,  and  it  beings  maintainable  that 
the  mass  of  mankind  do  so,  the  existence  of  a  perdurable 
basis  of  sensations,  distinct  from  sensations  themselves, 
is  proved,  it  might  be  said,  by  the  possibility  of  believ- 
ing it. 

Let  me  first  restate  what  I  apprehend  the  belief  to  be. 
We  believe  that  we  perceive  a  something  closely  related 
to  all  our  sensations,  but  different  from  those  which  w^e 
are  feeling  at  any  particular  minute ;  and  distinguished 
from  sensations  altogether,  by  being  permanent  and 
always  the  same,  while  these  are  fugitiv^e,  variable,  and 
alternately  displace  one  another.  But  these  attributes 
of  the  object  of  perception  are  properties  belonging  to  all 
the  possibilities  of  sensation  which  experience  guarantees. 
The  belief  in  such  permanent  possibilities  seems  to  me 
to  include  all  that  is  essential  or  characteristic  in  the 
belief  in  substance.  I  believe  that  Calcutta  exist**, 
though  I  do  not  perceive  it,  and  that  it  would  still  exist 
if  every  percipient  inhabitant  were  suddenly  to  leave  the 
place,  or  be  struck  dead.  But  when  I  analyse  the  belief, 
all  I  find  in  it  is,  that  were  these  events  to  take  place,  the 
Permanent  Possibility  of  Sensation  which  I  call  Calcutta 
would  still  remain  ;  that  if  I  were  suddenly  transported  to 
the  banks  of  the  Hoogly,  I  should  still  have  the  sensa- 
tions which,  if  now  present,  would  lead  me  to  affirm 
that  Calcutta  exists  here  and  now.  We  may  infer, 
therefore,  that  both  philosophers  and  the  world  at  large, 
when  they  think  of  matter,  conceive  it  really  as  a 
Permanent  Possibility  of  Sensation.  But  the  majority 
of  philosophers  fancy  that  it  is  something  more ;  and 
the  world  at  large*,  though  they  have  really,  as  I  con- 
ceive, nothing  in  their  minds  but  a  Permanent  Possibility 
of  Sensation,  would,  if  asked  the  question,  undoubtedly 
agree  with  the  philosophers :  and  though  this  is  suf- 
ficiently explained  by  the  tendency  of  the  human  mind 
to  infer  ditierence  of  things  from  difference  of  names, 
I  acknowledge  the  obligation  of  showing  how  it  can 
be  possible  to  believe  in  an  existence  transcending 
all  possibilities  of  sensation,  unless  on  the  hypothesis 


236  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF    THE 

that  such  an  existence  actually  is,  and  that  we  actually 
perceive  it. 

The  explanation,  however,  is  not  difficult.  It  is  an 
admitted  fact,  that  we  are  capable  of  all  conceptions 
which  can  be  formed  by  generalizing  from  the  observed 
laws  of  our  sensations.  Whatever  relation  we  find  to 
exist  between  an}^  one  of  our  sensations  and  something 
difl^erent  from  it,  that  same  relation  we  have  no  difficulty 
in  conceiving  to  exist  between  the  sum  oF  all  our  sensa- 
tions and  something  different  from  them.  The  differences 
which,  our  consciousness  recognises  between  one  sensation 
and  another,  give  us  the  general  notion  of  difference,  and 
inseparably  associate  with  every  sensation  we  have,  the 
leeling  of  its  being  different  from  other  things  :  and  when 
once  this  association  has  been  formed,  we  can  nolonger 
cmiceive  anything,  without  being  able,  and  even  being 
compelled,  to  form  also  the  conception  of  something  dif- 
^  ferent  from  it.  This  familiarity  with  the  idea  of  some- 
thing different  from  each  thing  we  know,  makes  it  natural 
and  easy  to  form  the  notion  of  something  different  from 
all  things  that  we  know,  collectively  as  well  as  indi- 
vidually. It  is  true  we  can  form  no  conception  of  what 
such  a  thing  can  be  ;  our  notion  of  it  is  merely  negative  ; 
but  the  idea  of  a  substance,  apart  from  its  relation  to 
the  impressions  which  we  conceive  it  as  making  on  our 
senses,  is  a  merely  negative  one.  There  is  thus  no 
psychological,  obstacle  to  our  forming  the  notion  of  a 
something  which  is  neither  a  sensation  nor  a  possibility 
of  sensation,  even  if  our  consciousness  does  not  testily 
to  it ;  and  nothing  is  more  likely  than  that  the  Perma- 
nent Possibilities  of  sensation,  to  which  our  conscious- 
ness does  testify,  should  be  confounded  in  our  minds 
with  this  imaginary  conception.  All  experience  attests 
the  strength  of  the  tendency  to  mistake  mental  abstrac- 
tions, even  negative  ones,  for  substantive  realities ;  and 
the  Permanent  Possibilities  of  sensation  which  experience 
guarantees,  are  so  extremely  unlike  in  many  of  their 
properties  to  actual  sensations,  that  since  we  are  capable 
of  imagining    something  which    transcends    sensation, 


BELIEF   IN    AN    EXTERNAL   WORLD.  237 

there  is    a   great  natural   probability   that   we    should 
suppose  these  to  be  it. 

But  this  natural  probability  is  converted  into  certainty, 
when  we  take  into  consideration  that  universal  law  of 
our  experience  which  is  termed  the  law  of  Causation,  and 
which  makes  us  mentally  connect  with  the  beginninsf  of 
everything,  some  antecedent  condition,  or  Cause.  The 
case  of  Causation  is  one  of  the  most  marked  of  all  the 
cases  in  which  we  extend  to  the  sum  total  of  our  conscious- 
ness, a  notion  derived  from  its  parts.  It  is  a  striking 
example  of  our  power  to  conceive,  and  our  tendency  to 
believe,  that  a  relation  which  subsists  between  every 
individual  item  of  our  experience  and  some  other  item, 
subsists  also  between  our  experience  as  a  whole,  and 
something  not  within  the  sphere  of  experience.  By  this 
extension  to  the  sum  of  all  our  experiences,  of  the  internal 
relations  obtaining  between  its  several  parts,  we  are  led 
to  consider  sensation  itself — the  airgregate  whole  of 
our  sensations — as  deriving  its  origin  from  antecedent 
existences  transcending  sensation.  That  we  should  do 
this,  is  a  consequence  of  the  particular  character  of  the 
uniform  sequences,  which  experience  discloses  to  us 
among  our  sensations.  As  already  remarked,  the  con- 1 
stant  antecedent  of  a  sensation  is  seldom  another  sensa-  ' 
tion,  or  set  of  sensations,  actually  felt.  It  is  much 
oftener  the  existence  of  a  group  of  possibilities,  not 
necessarily  including  any  actual  sensations,  except  such 
as  are  required  to  show  that  the  possibilities  are  really 
present.  Nor  are  actual  sensations  indispensable  even  ' 
tor  this  purpose;  for  the  presence  of  the  object  (which 
is  nothing  more  than  the  immediate  presence  of  the 
possibilities)  may  be  made  known  to  us  by  the  very 
sensation  which  we  refer  to  it  as  its  effect.  Thus,  the 
real  antecedent  of  an  effect — the  only  antecedent  which, 
being  invariable  and  unconditional,  we  consider  to  be 
the  cause — may  be,  not  any  sensation  really  felt,  but 
solely  the  presence,  at  that  or  the  immediately  preceding 
moment,  of  a  group  of  possibilities  of  sensation  Hence 
it  is  not  with   sensations  as  actually   experienced,  but 


238  THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF   THE 

with  their  Permanent  Possibilities,  that  the  idea  of 
Cause  comes  to  be  identified :  and  we,  by  one  and  the 
same  process,  acquire  the  habit  of  regarding  Sensation 
in  g-eneral,  like  all  our  individual  sensations,  as  an  Effect, 
and  also  that  of  conceiving  as  the  causes  of  most  of  our 
individual  sensations,  not  other  sensations,  but  general 
possibilities  of  sensation.  If  all  these  considerations  put 
together  do  not  completely  explain  and  account  for  our 
conceiving  these  Possibilities  as  a  class  of  independent 
and  substantive  entities,  I  know  not  what  psychological 
analysis  can  be  conclusive. 

It  may  perhaps  be  said,  that  the  preceding  theory 
gives,  indeed,  some  account  of  the  idea  of  Permanent 
Existence  which  forms  part  of  our  conception  of  matter, 
but  gives  no  explanation  of  our  believing  these  per- 
manent objects  to  be  external,  or  out  of  ourselves.  T 
apprehend,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  very  idea  of  any- 
thing out  of  ourselves  is  derived  solely  from  the  know- 
ledge experience  gives  us  of  the  Permanent  Possibilities. 
Our  sensations  we  carry  with  us  wherever  we  go,  and 
they  never  exist  where  we  are  not ;  but  when  we  change 
our  place  we  do  not  carry  away  with  us  the  Permanent 
Possibilities  of  Sensation  :  they  remain  until  we  return,  or 
arise  and  cease  under  conditions  with  which  our  presence 
has  in  general  nothing  to  do.  And  more  than  all — 
they  are,  and  will  be  alter  we  have  ceased  to  feel.  Per- 
manent Possibilities  of  sensation  to  other  beings  than 
ourselves.  Thus  our  actual  sensations  and  the  per- 
manent possibilities  of  sensation,  stand  out  in  obtrusive 
contrast  to  one  another  :  and  when  the  idea  of  Cause  has 
been  acquired,  and  extended  by  generalization  from  the 
parts  of  our  experience  to  its  aggregate  whole,  nothing 
can  be  more  natural  than  that  the  Permanent  Possi- 
bilities should  be  classed  by  us  as  existences  generically 
distinct  from  our  sensations,  but  of  which  our  sensations 
are  the  effect.* 

*  My  able  American  critic,  Dr.  H.  B.  Smith,  contends  through  several 
pages  (l52-lii7 )  that  these  facts  afford  no  proofs  that  objects  are  external 
to  us.    I  never  pretended  that  they  do.    I  am  accounting  for  our  conceiving, 


%^' 


BELIEF    IN    AN    EXTERNAL    WORLD.  239 

The  same  theory  which  accounts  for  our  ascribing  to 
an  aggregate  of  possibilities  of  sensation,  a  permanent 
existence  which  our  sensations  themselves  do  not  possess, 
and  consequently  a  greater  reality  than  belongs  to  our 
sensations,  also  explains  our  attributing  greater  objec-    ■     ^ 
tivity  to  the  Primary  Qualities   of  bodies  than  to  the   I     {\p 
Secondary.      For   the  sensations  which   correspond   to    i    ^ 
what  are  called  the  Primary  Qualities  (as  soon  at  least 
as  we  come  to  apprehend  them  by  two  senses,  the  eye  as 
well  as  the  touch)  are  always  present  when  any  part  of 
the  group  is  so.      But  colours,  tastes,  smells,  and  the 
like,   being,   in   comparison,   fugacious,  are  not,   in   the 
same  degree,  conceived  as  being  always  there,  even  when 
nobody  is  present  to  perceive  them.      The   sensations 
answering  to  the  Secondary  Qualities  are  only  occasional, 
those  to  the  Primary,  constant.     The  Secondary,  more- 
over, vary  with  different  persons,  and  with  the  temporary 
sensibility  of  our  organs ;   the  Primary,  when  perceived 
at  all,  are,  as  far  as  we  know,  the  same  to  all  persons  i 
and  at  all  times. 

or  representing  to  ourselves,  the  Permanent  Possibilities  as  real  objects    y 
external  to  us.     I  do  not  believe  that  the  real  externality  to  us  of  anything,  ^ 
except- other  minds,  is  capable  of  proof.     But  the  Permanent  Possibilities     \ 
are  external  to  us  in  tne  only  sense  we  need  care  about;  they  are  not 
constructed  by  the  mind  itself,  but  merely  recognised  by  it ;  in  Kantian 
language,  they  are  given  to  us,  and  to  other  beings  in  common  with  us. 
"  Men  cannot  act,  cannot  live,"  says  Professor  Fraser  (p.  26),  "  without'] 
"  assuming  an  external  world,  in  some  conception  of  the  term  external.  !| 
"  It  is  the  business  of  the  philosopher  to  explain  what  that  conception  | 
"ought  to  be.     For  ourselves  we  can  conceive  only — (1)  An  extemaUty  to  ' 
"  our  present  and  transient  experience  in  our  own  possible  experience  past., 
"  and  future,  and  (2)  An  externality  to  our  own  conscious  experience,  in  '■ 
"  the  contemporaneous,  as  well  as  in  the  past  or  future  experience  of  other  U 
"  minds."     The  view  I  take  of  externality,  in  the  sense  in  which  I  acknow- 
ledge it  as  real,  could  not  be  more  accurately  expressed  than  in  Professor 
Fraser's  words.     Dr.  Smith's  criticisms  continually  go  wide  of  the  mark 
because  he  has  somehow  imagined  that  I  am  defending,  instead  of  attack- 
ing, the  belief  in  Matter  as  an  entity  per  se.     As  when  he  says  (pp.  157- 
158)  that   my  reasoning   assumes,   contrary  to   my  own   opinion,  "  an 
"  a  priori  necessity  and  validity  of  the  law  of  cause  and  effe  :t,  or  in- 
"  variable  antecedence  and  consequence."     This  might  fairly  have  been 
said  if  I  were  defending  the  belief  in  the  supposed  hidden  cause  of  our 
sensations  :  but  I  am  only  accounting  for  it ;  and  to  do  so  I  assume  only 
the  tendency,  but  not  the  legitimacy  of  the  tendency,  to  extend  all  the 
laws  of  our  own  experience  to  a  sphere  beyond  our  experience. 


240 


CHAPTER  XII. 


THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL     THEORY    OF    THE     BELIEF    IN    MATTER, 
HOW    FAR    APPLICABLE    TO    MIND. 

If  the  deductions  in  the  preceding  chapter  are  correctly 
drawn  from  known  and  admitted  laws  of  the  human 
mind,  the  doctrine  which  forms  the  basis  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  system  of  psychology,  that  Mind  and  Matter, 
an  ego  and  a  non-ego,  are  original  data  of  consciousness,  is 
deprived  of  its  foundation.  Although  these  two  elements, 
an  Esro  and  a  Non-ego,  are  in  (what  we  call)  our  con- 
sciousness now,  and  are,  or  seem  to  be,  inseparable  from  it, 
there  is  no  reason  for  believing  that  the  latter  of  them, 
the  non-ego,  was  in  consciousness  from  the  beginning; 
since,  even  if  it  was  not,  we  can  perceive  a  way  in  which 
it  not  only  might,  but  must  have  grown  up.  We  can  see 
that,  supposing  it  absent  in  the  first  instance,  it  would 
inevitably  be  present  now,  not  as  a  deliverance  of  con- 
sciousness in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  sense,  for  to  call  it  so  is 
to  beg  the  question  ;  but  as  an  instantaneous  and  irresis- 
tible suggestion  and  inference,  which  has  become  by  long 
repetition  undistinguishable  from  a  direct  intuition.  I 
now  propose  to  carry  the  inquiry  a  step  farther,  and  to 
examine  whether  the  Ego,  as  a  deliverance  of  con- 
sciousness, stands  on  firmer  ground  than  the  Non-ego ; 
whether,  at  the  first  moment  of  our  experience,  we 
already  have  in  our  consciousness  the  conception  of  Self 
as  a  permanent  existence ;  or  whether  it  is  formed  sub- 
sequently, and  admits  of  a  similar  analysis  to  that  which 
we  have  found  that  the  notion  of  Not-self  is  suscep- 
tible of. 

It  is  evident,  in  the  first  place,  that  our  knowledge  of 


) 


THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL  THEORY  AS  APPLIED  TO  MIND.       241 

mind,  like  that  of  matter,  is   entirely  relative ;  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  indeed  affirms  this  of  mind,  in  an  even  more 
unqualified  manner  than  he  believes  it  of  matter,  making 
no  distinction  between  Primary  and  Secondary  Qaalities. 
"  In  so  far*  as  mind  is  the  common  name  for  the  states 
"  of  knowing,  willing,  feeling,  desiring,  &c.,  of  which  I 
"  am  conscious,  it  is  only  the  name  for  a  certain  series  of 
"  connected  phsenomena  or  qualities,  and  consequently 
"  expresses  only  what  is  known.     But  in  so  far  as  it 
"  denotes   that  subject  or  substance  in  which  the  phse- 
"  nomena  of  knowing,  willing,   &c.,  inhere — something 
"  behind  or  under  these  phsenomena — it  expresses  what, 
"  in  itself,  or  in  its  absolute  existence,  is  unknown."   We 
have  no  conception  of  Mind  itself,  as  distinguished  from 
its  conscious  manifestations.     We  neither  know  nor  can 
imagine  it,  except  as  represented  by  the  succession  of 
manifold  feelings  which  metaphysicians  call  by  the  name 
of  States  or  Modifications  of  Mind.     It  is  nevertheless 
ii'ue  that  our  notion  of  Mind,  as  well  as  of  Matter,  is^ 
the  notion  of  a  permanent  something,  contrasted  with 
the  perpetual  flux  of  the  sensations  and  other  feelings  or 
mental  states  which  we  refer  to  it;  a  something  which 
we  figure  as  remaining  the  same,  while  the  particular 
Jbelings  through  which  it  reveals  its  existence,  change. 
This  attribute  of  Permanence,  supposing  that  there  were 
"Eottiing  else  to  be  considered,  would  admit  of  the  same 
explanation  when  predicated  of  Mind,  as  of  Matter.    The  f  <^ 
belief  I  entertain  that  my  mind  exists  when  it  is  aaot  I 
feeling,  nor  thinking,  nor  conscious  of  its  own  existence,  |i 
resolves  itself  into  the  belief  of  a  Permanent  Possibility  , 
of  these  states.     If  I  think  of  myself  as  in  dreamless 
sleep,  or  in  the  sleep  of  death,  and  believe  that  I,  or  in 
other  words  my  mind,  is   or  will  be  existing  through 
these  states,  though  not  in  conscious  feeling,  the-_most 
scrupulous  examination  of  my  belief  will  not  detect  in 
it  any  fact  actually  believed,  except  that  my  capability  I 
of  feeling  is  not,  in  that  interval,  permanently  destroyed,    | 
and  is  suspended  only  because  it  does  not  meet  vvlth  the    i 
*  Lectures,  i.  138. 
R 


< 


242  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL  THEORY    OF   MATTER 

combination  of  conditions  which  would  call  itjntoaction  : 
the  moment  it  did  meet  with  that  combination  it  would 
revive,  and  remains,  therefore,  a  PermanenFTossibility. 
Thus  far,  there  seems  no  hindrance  to  our  regarding 
Mind  as '  nothing  but  the  series  of  our  sensations  (to 
which  must  now  be  added  our  internal  feelings),  as 
they  actually  occur,  with  the  addition  of  infinite  j)os- 
sibilities  of  feeling  requiring  for  their  actual  realization 
conditions  which  may  or  may  not  take  place,  but  which 
as  possibilities  are  always  in  existence,  and  many  of 
them  present. 

In  order  to  the  further  understanding  of  the  bearings 
of  this  theory  of  the  Ego,  it  is  advisable  to  consider  it 
in  its  relation  to  three  questions,  which  may  very 
naturally  be  asked  with  reference  to  it,  and  which  often 
have  been  asked,  and  sometimes  answered  very  erro- 
neously. If  the  theory  is  correct,  and  my  mind  is  but 
a  series  of  feelings,  or,  as  it  has  been  called,  a  thread  of 
consciousness,  however  supplemented  by  believed  Pos- 
sibilities of  consciousness  which  are  not,  though  the}'- 
might  be,  realized ;  if  this  is  all  that  Mind,  or  Myself, 
amounts  to,  what  evidence  have  I  ^it  is  asked)  of  the 
existence  of  my  fellow-creatures  ?  What  evidence  of  a 
hyperphysical  world,  or,  in  one  word,  of  God?  and, 
I   lastly,  what  evidence  of  immortality  ? 

Dr.  Eeid  unhesitatingly  answers,  None.  If  the  doc- 
trine is  true,  I  am  alone  in  the  universe. 

I  hold  this  to  be  one  of  Reid's  most  palpable  mistakes. " 
Whatever  evidence  to  each  of  the  three  points  there  is 
on  the  ordinary  theory,  exactly  that  same  evidence  is 
there  on  this. 

In  the  first  place,  as  to  my  fellow-creatures.  Eeid 
seems  to  have  imagined  that  if  I  mj^self  am  only  a  series 
of  feelings,  the  proposiJ:ion  that  I  have  any  fellow- 
creatures,  or  that  there  are  any  Selves  except  mine,  is 
but  words  without  a  meaning.  But  this  is  a  misappre- 
hension. All  that  I  am  compelled  to  admit  if  I  receive 
this  theory,  is  that  other  people's  Selves  also  are  but 
series  of  feelings,  like  my  own.     Though  ray  Mind,  as  1 


> 


HOW    FAR   APPLICABLE    TO    MIND. 


243 


am  capable  of  conceiving  it,  be  nothing  but  the  succes- 
sion of  my  feelings,  and  though  Mind  itself  may  be 
merely  a  possibility  of  feelings,  there  is  nothing  in  that 
doctrine  to  prevent  my  conceiving,  and  believing,  that 
fhere  are  other  successions  of  feelings  besides  those  of 
which  I  am  conscious,  and  that  these  are  as  real  as  my 
own.  The  belief  is  completely  consistent  with  the  me- 
taphysical theory.  Let  us  now  see  whether  the  theory 
takes  away  the  grounds  of  it. 

^  What  are  those  grounds  ?  By  what  evidence  do  I 
know,  or  by  what  considerations  am  I  led  to  believe, 
that  there  exist  other  sentient  creatures ;  that  the 
walking  and  speaking  figures  which  I  see  and  hear,  have 
sensations  and  thoughts,  or  in  other  words,  possess 
Minds?  The  most  strenuous  Intuitionist  does  not  in- 
clude this  among  the  things  that  I  know  by  direct 
intuition.  I  conclude  it  from  certain  things,  which  my ' 
experience  of  my  own  states  of  feeling  proves  to  me  to 
be  marks  of  it.  These  marks  are  of  two  kinds,  ante 
cedent  and  subsequent ;  the  previous  conditions  requisite 
for  feeling,  and  the  effects  or  consequences  of  it.  I  con-  i 
elude  that  other  human  beings  have  feelings  like  me, 
because,  first,  they  have  bodies  like  me,  which  I  know, 
in  my  own  case,  to  be  the  antecedent  condition  of  feel- 
ings ;  and  because,  secondly,  they  exhibit  the  acts,  and 
other  outward  signs,  which  in  ray  own  case  I  know  by 
experience  to  be  caused  by  feelings.  I  am  conscious  in 
myself  of  a  series  of  facts  connected  by  an  uniform 
sequence,  of  which  the  beginning  is  modifications  of  my 
body,  the  middle  is  feelings,  the  end  is  outward  de- 
meanour. In  the  case  of  other  human  beings  I  have 
the  evidence  of  my  senses  for  the  first  and  last  links  of 
the  series,  but  not  for  the  intermediate  link.  I  find, 
however,  that  the  sequence  between  the  first  and  last  is 
as  regular  and  constant  in  those  other  cases  as  it  is  in 
mine.  In  my  own  case  I  know  that  the  first  link  pro- 
duces the  last  through  the  intermediate  link,  and  could 
not  produce  it  without.  Experience,  therefore,  obliges 
me  to  conclude  that  there  must  be  an  intermediate  link ; 

r2 


£.< 


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^ 


244  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF   MATTER 

which  must  either  be  the  same  in  others  as  in  myself,  or 
a  different  one :  T  must  either  believe  them  to  be  alive, 
or  to  be  automatons  :  and  by  })elieving'  them  to  be  alive, 
that  is,  by  supposing  the  link  to  be  of  the  same  nature 
as  in  the  case  of  which  I  have  experience,  and  which  is 
in  all  other  respects  similar,  I  bring  other  human  beings, 
as  phsenomena,  under  the  same  generalizations  which  I 
know  by  experience  to  be  the  true  theory  of  my  own 
existence.  And  in  doing  so  I  conform  to  the  legitimate 
rules  of  experimental  enquiry.  The  process  is  exactly 
parallel  to  that  by  which  Kewton  proved  that  the  force 
which  keeps  the  planets  in  their  orbits  is  identical  with 
that  by  which  an  apple  falls  to  the  ground.  It  was  not 
incumbent  on  Newton  to  prove  the  impossibility  oi  its 
being  any  other  force  ;  he  was  thought  to  have  made 
out  his  point  when  he  had  simply  shown,  that  no  other 
force  need  be  supposed.  We  know  the  existence  of  other 
beings  by  generalization  from  the  knowledge  of  our 
own :  the  generalization  merely  postulates  that  what 
experience  shows  to  be  a  mark  of  the  existence  of  some- 
thing within  the  sphere  of  our  consciousness,  may  be  con- 
cluded to  be  a  mark  of  the  same  thing  beyond  that  sphere. 
This  logical  process  loses  none  of  its  legitimacy  on 
the  supposition  that  neither  Mind  nor  Matter  is  any- 
thing but  a  permanent  possibility  of  feeling.  What- 
ever sensation  I  have,  I  at  once  refer  it  to  one  of  the 
permanent  groups  of  possibilities  of  sensation  which  I 
call  material  objects.  But  among  these  groups  I  find 
there  is  one  (my  own  body)  which  is  not  only  composed, 
like  the  rest,  of  a  mixed  multitude  of  sensations  and  possi- 
bilities of  sensation,  but  is  also  connected,  in  a  peculiar 
manner,  with  all  my  sensations.  Not  only  is  this  special 
group  always  present  as  an  antecedent  condition  of  every 
sensation  I  have,  but  the  other  groups  are  only  enabled 
to  convert  their  respective  possibilities  of  sensation  into 
actual  sensations,  by  means  of  some  previous  change  in 
that  particular  one.  I  look  about  me,  and  though 
there  is  only  one  group  (or  body)  which  is  connected 
with    all    my   sensations   in   this   peculiar    manner,   I 


HOW   PAR   APPLICABLE  TO   MIND.  245 

observe  that  there  is  a  great  multitude  of  other  bodies, ' 
closely  resembling  in  their  sensible  properties   (in  the 
sensations  composing  them   as  groups)  this  particular 
one,  but  whose  modifications  do  not  call  up,  as  those  of - 
my  own  body  do,  a  world  of  sensations  in  my  conscious-  j 
ness.     Since  they  do  not  do  so  in  my  consciousness,  I ' 
infer  that  they  do  it  oat  of  my  consciousness,  and  that 
to  each  of  them  belongfs  a  world  of  consciousness  of  its 
own,  to  which  it  stands  in  the  same  relation  in  which 
what  I  call  my  own  body  stands  to  mine.     And  having 
made   this    generalization,  I   find   that   all   other  facts , 
within  my  reach  accord  with  it.     Each  of  these  bodies 
exhibits  to  my  senses  a  set  of  phsenomena  (composed  of  i 
acts  and  other  manifestations)  such  as  I  know,  in  my  i 
own  case,   to   be  effects  of  consciousness,  and  such  as 
might  be  looked  for  if  each  of  the  bodies  has  really  in 
connexion  with  it  a  world  of  consciousness.     All  this  is  ■ 
as  good  and  genuine  an  inductive  process  on  the  theory 
we  are  discussing,  as  it  is  on  the  common  theory.     Any 
objection  to  it  in  the  one  case  would  be  an  equal  objec- 
tion in  the  other.     I  have  stated  the  postulate  required 
by  the  one  theory :  the  common  theory  is  in  need  of  the 
same.     If  I  could  not,  from  my  personal  knowledge  of 
one  succession  of  feelingrs,  infer  the  existence  of  other 
successions  of  feelings,  when  manifested   by  the  same 
outward  signs,  1  could  just  as  little,  from  my  personal 
knowledge   of   a   single   spiritual    substance,   infer    by 
generalization,  when    I   find  the  same  outward  indica- 
tions, the  existence  of  other  spiritual  substances. 

As  the  theory  leaves  the  evidence  of  the  existence 
of  my  fellow-creatures  exactly  as  it  was  before,  so  does 
it  also  with  that  of  the  existence  of  God.  Supposing 
me  to  believe  that  the  Divine  Mind  is  simply  the  series 
of  the  Divine  thoughts  and  feelings  prolonged  through 
eternity,  that  would  be,  at  any  rate,  believing  God's 
existence  to  be  as  real  as  my  own.  And  as  for  evidence, 
the  argument  of  Paley's  Natural  Theology,  or,  for  that 
matter,  of  his  Evidences  of  Christianity,  would  stand 
exactly  where  it  does.     The  Design  argument  is  drawn 


246  THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL   THEORY    OF    MATTER 

from  the  analogy  of  human  experience.  From  the  rela- 
tion which  human  works  bear  to  human  thoughts  and 
feelings,  it  infers  a  corresponding  relation  between  works, 
more  or  less  similar  but  superhuman,  and  superhuman 
thoughts  and  feelings.  If  it  proves  these,  nobody  but 
a  metaphysician  needs  care  whether  or  not  it  proves  a 
mysterious  substratum  for  them.  Again,  the  arguments 
for  Eevelation  undertake  to  prove  by  testimony,  that 
within  the  sphere  of  human  experience  works  were  done 
requiring  a  greater  than  human  power,  and  words  said 
requiring  a  greater  than  human  wisdom.  These  posi- 
tions, and  the  evidences  of  them,  neither  lose  nor  gain 
anything  by  our  supposing  that  the  wisdom  only  means 
wise  thoughts  and  volitions,  and  that  the  power  means 
thoughts  and  volitions  followed  by  imposing  phajnomena. 

As  to  immortality,  it  is  precisely  as  easy  to  conceive 
that  a  succession  of  feelings,  a  thread  of  consciousness, 
may  be  prolonged  to  eternity,  as  that  a  spiritual  sub- 
stance for  ever  continues  to  exist:  and  any  evidence 
which  would  prove  the  one,  will  prove  the  other.  Meta- 
physical theologians  may  lose  the  a  priori  argument  by 
which  they  have  sometimes  flattered  themselves  with 
having  proved  that  a  spiritual  substance,  by  the  essen- 
tial constitution  of  its  nature,  cannot  perish.  But  they 
had  better  drop  this  argument  in  any  case.  To  do  them 
justice,  they  seldom  insist  on  it  now. 

The  notion  that  metaphysical  Scepticism,  even  at  the 
utmost  length  to  which  it  ever  has  been,  or  is  capable  of 
being,  carried,  has  for  its  logical  consequence  atheism, 
is  grounded  on  an  entire  misapprehension  of  the  Scep- 
tical argument,  and  has  no  locus  standi  except  for  persons 
who  think  that  whatever  accustoms  people  to  a  rigid 
scrutiny  of  evidence  is  unfavourable  to  religious  belief. 
This  is  the  opinion,  doubtless,  of  those  who  do  not 
believe  in  any  religion,  and  seemingly  of  a  great  number 
who  do  :  but  it  is  not  the  opinion  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
who  says*  that  "  religious  disbeiief  and  philosophical 
"  scepticism  are  not  merely  not  the  same,  but  have  no 

*  Lectures,  i.  394. 


HOW    FAR   APPLICABLE   TO   MIND.  247 

"  natural  connexion ;"  and  who,  as  we  have  seen,  makes 
use  of  the  veracity  of  the  Deity  as  his  principal  argu-  - 
ment  for  trusting  the  testimony  of  consciousness  to  the 
substantiality  of  Matter  and  of  Mind,  which  would  have 
been  a  gross  petitio  principii  if  he  had  thought  that  our  , 
assurance  of  the  divine  attributes  required  that  the 
objective  existence  of  Matter  and  Mind  should  be  first 
recognised. 

The  theory,  therefore,   which  resolves  Mind   mto  a 
series  of  feelings,  with  a  background  of  possibilities  of  i 
feeling,    can  effectually  withstand   the  most   invidious  j    v- 
of  the  arguments  directed  against  it.     But,  groundless  j^\ 
as  are  the  extrinsic  objections,  the  theory  has  intrinsic  j 
difficulties  which  we  have  not  yet  set  forth,  and  which  it  j 
seems  to  me  beyond  the  power  of  metaphysical  analysis  t 
to  remove.     Besides  present  feelings,  and  possibilities  of  j 
present  feeling,  there  is  another  class  of  phsenomena  to  ^1 
be  included  in  an  enumeration  of  the  elements  making  j 
up  our  conception  of  Mind.     The  thread  of  conscious-  V  .^^^ev 
ness  which  composes  the  mind's  phsenomenal  life,  con-  l^^f'^^l-^ 
sists  not  only  of  present  sensations,  but  likewise,  in  part, 
of  memories  and  expectations.     Now  what  are  these  ?  | 
In  themselves,  they  are  present  feelings,  states  of  present  | 
consciousness,  and  in  that  respect  not  distinguished  from  , 
sensations.     They  all,  moreover,  resemble  some  given  '' 
sensations  or  feelings,  of  which  we  have  previously  had 
experience.     But  they  are  attended  with  tha  peculiarity, 
that  each  of  them  involves  a  belief  in  more  than  its  own 
present  existence.     A  sensation  involves  only  this  :  but 
a  remembrance  of  sensation,  even  if  not  referred  to  any 
particular  date,  involves  the  suggestion  and  belief  that  a 
sensation,  of  which  it  is  a  copy  or  representation,  actually 
existed  in  the.  past :  and  an  expectation  involves  the 
belief,  more  or  less  positive,  that  a  sensation  or  other 
feeling  to  which  it  directly  refers,  will  exist  in  the  future,  i 
!Nor  can  the  phsenomena  involved  in  these  two  states  of 
consciousness  be  adequately  expressed,  without  saying 
that  the  belief  they  include  is,  that  1  myself  formerly 
had,  or  that  1  myself,  and  no  other,  shall  hereafter  have. 


248  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL  THEORY   OF   MATTER 

the  sensations  remembered  or  expected.  The  fact  be- 
lieved is,  that  the  sensations  did  actually  form,  or  will 
hereafter  form,  part  of  the  self-same  series  of  states,  or 
thread  of  consciousness,  of  which  the  remembrance  or  ex- 
pectation of  those  sensations  is  the  part  now  present.  If, 
therefore,  we  speak  of  the  Mind  as  a  series  of  feelings, 
we  are  obliged  to  complete  the  statement  by  calling  it  a 
series  of  feelings  which  is  aware  of  itself  as  past  and 
future  ;  and  we  are  reduced  to  the  alternative  of  believ- 
ing that  the  Mind,  or  Ego,  is  something  different  from 
any  series  of  feelings,  or  possibilities  of  them,  or  of  ac- 
cepting the  paradox,  that  something  which  ex  hypothesi  is 
but  a  series  of  feelings,  can  be  aware  of  itself  as  a  series. 

The  truth  is,  that  we  are  here  face  to  face  with  that 
final  inexplicability,  at  which,  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
observes,  we  inevitably  arrive  when  we  reach  ultimate 
facts ;  and  in  general,  one  mode  of  stating  it  only 
appears  more  incomprehensible  than  another,  because 
the  whole  of  human  language  is  accommodated  to  the 
one,  and  is  so  incongruous  with  the  other,  that  it  cannot 
be  expressed  in  any  terms  which  do  not  deny  its  truth. 
The  real  stumbling  block  is  perhaps  not  in  any  theory 
of  the  fact,  but  in  the  fact  itself  The  true  incompre- 
hensibility perhaps  is,  that  something  which  has  ceased, 
or  is  not  yet  in  existence,  can  still  be,  in  a  manner, 
present :  that  a  series  of  feelings,  the  infinitely  greater 
part  of  which  is  past  or  future,  can  be  gathered  up,  as 
it  were,  into  a  single  present  conception,  accompanied 
by  a  belief  of  reality.  I  think,  by  far  the  wisest  thing 
we  can  do,  is  to  accept  the  inexplicable  fact,  without 
any  theory  of  how  it  takes  place  ;  and  when  we  are 
obliged  to  speak  of  it  in  terms  which  assume  a  theory, 
to  use  them  with  a  reservation  as  to  their  meaning. 

I  have  stated  the  difficulties  attending  the  attempt  to 
frame  a  theory  of  Mind,  or  the  Ego,  similar  to  what  I 
have  called  the  Psychological  Theory  of  Matter,  or  the 
Non-ego.  No  such  difficulties  attend  the  theory  in  its 
application  to  Matter ;  and  T  leave  it,  as  set  forth,  to  pass 
for  whatever  it  is  worth  as  an  antagonist  doctrine  to  that 


HOW   FAR   APPLICABLE   TO    MIND.  249 

of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  the  Scottish  School,  respecting 
the  non-ego  as  a  deliverance  of  consciousness.* 

*  Mr.  Mansel,  in  his  "  Prolegomena  Logica,"  shows  a  perception  of  the 
difference  here  pointed  out  between  the  character  of  the  Psychological 
explanation  of  the  belief  in  Matter,  and  that  of  the  belief  in  Mind ;  and  he 
resolves  the  question  b^  drawing  a  distinction  between  the  two  Noumena, 
not  often  drawn  by  philosophers  posterior  to  Berkeley.  He  considers  the 
Ego  to  be  a  direct  presentation  of  consciousness,  while  with  regard  to  the 
Non-ego  he  is  not  far  from  adopting  the  Berkeleian  theory.  The  whole  of 
his  remarks  on  the  subject  are  well  worth  reading.  See  Prolegomena 
Logica,  pp.  122-135. 


250 


APPENDIX  TO  THE  TWO  PRECEDING  CHAPTERS. 

This  attempt 'to  bring  out  into  distinctness  the  mode  in  which 
the  notions  of  Matter  and  Mind,  considered  as  Substances,  may 
have  been  generated  in  us  by  the  mere  order  of  our  sensations, 
has  naturally  received  from  those  whose  metaphysical  opinions 
■^f^  were  already  made  up,  a  much  greater  amount  of  opposition 
fc*  wf^  I  than  of  assent.     I  think  I  have  observed,  however,  that  the  re- 
T^^'^jc    pugnance  shown  to  it  by  writers  has  been  in  tolerably  correct 
j,*'^j.|.  proportion  to  the  evidence  they  give  of  deficiency  in  that  indis- 
j^   ^^'  pensable  aptitude  of  a  metaphysician,  facility  in  placing  himself 
f*^4r  V^i   ^^  the  point  of  view  of  a  theory  different  from  his  own  :  and 
y^, .      that  those  who  have  ever  (if  the  expression  may  be  pardoned) 
J^         thought  themselves  into  the  Berkeleian  or  any  other  Idealistic 
scheme  of  philosophy,   however  little  favourable  towards  other 
parts  of  the  present  volume,  have  either  let  this  part  of  it  alone, 
or  expressed  more  or  less  approbation  of  it.     Those  who  are 
completely   satisfied    with    the    popular    every-day    notion   of 
Matter,  or  whose  metaphysics  have  been  adopted  from  any  of 
the  Realistic  thinkers  who  undertake  to  legitimate  that  common 
notion,   are    usually  content    with  going  round   the    counter- 
theory  on  the  outside,  and  seldom  place  themselves  sufficiently 
at  the  centre  of  it  to  perceive  what  a  person  ought   to  think 
or  do,  who  occupies  that  position.     They  no  longer,  indeed, 
commit  so  gross  a  blunder  as  that  which,  not  very  long  ago, 
even  Reid,  Stewart,   and  Brown  rushed  blindly  into — that  of 
charging  a  Berkeleian   with  inconsistency  if  he  did  not  walk 
into  the  water  or  into  the  fire.     Acquaintance  with  the  German 
metaphysicians,  and  (it  is  but  just  to  add)  the  teachings  of  Sir 
W.  Hamilton,  have  had  that  much  of  beneficial  result.     But  if 
such  thinkers  as  these  three  could  pass  judgment  on  Berkeley's 
doctrine  while  showing  by  such  conclusive  proof  that  they  had 
never  understood  its  very  alphabet — that,  however  much  consi- 
deration they  may  have  given  to  the  mere  arguments  of  Berkeley, 
they  had  not  begun  to  realize  his  doctrine  in  their  own  minds 
— to  look  at  the  sensible  universe  as  he  saw  it,  and  see  what 
consequences  would  follow  ;  it  is  not  wonderful  that  those  who 
have  got  on  a  few  steps  further  than  this,  have  still  much  to 
do,   before   they  are   able   to   accommodate    their   conceptive 
faculties  to  the  conditions  of  what  I  have  called  the  Psycho- 


APPENDIX  TO  THE  TWO  PRECEDING  CHAPTERS.         251 

logical  Theory,  and  follow  that  theory  correctly  into  the  rami- 
fication of  its  applications. 

In  principle,  I  must  admit  that  my  opponents,  as  a  body, 
have  referred  the  Psychological  Theory  to  the  right  test.  They 
have  aimed  at  showing  that  its  attempt  to  account  for  the  belief 
in  Matter  (I  say  Matter  only,  because  I  do  not  profess  to  have 
adequately  accounted  for  the  belief  in  Mind)  implies  or  requires 
that  the  belief  should  already  exist,  as  a  condition  of  its  own 
production.  The  objection,  if  true,  is  conclusive ;  but  they  are 
not  very  particular  about  the  proof  of  its  truth.  They,  one  and 
all,  think  their  case  made  out,  if  I  employ,  in  any  part  of  the 
exposition,  the  language  of  common  life — a  language  con- 
structed on  the  basis  of  the  notions  into  the  origin  of  which  I 
am  inquiring.  If  I  say,  that  after  we  have  seen  a  piece  of  paper 
on  a  table,  our  belief  that  it  is  still  there  during  our  absence 
means  a  belief  that  if  we  went  again  into  the  room  we  should 
see  it,  they  cry  out.  Here  is  belief  in  Matter  already  assumed ; 
the  idea  of  going  into  a  room  implies  belief  in  matter.  If,  as 
a  proof  that  modifications  may  take  place  in  our  possibilities  of 
sensation  while  the  sensations  are  not  in  actual  consciousness, 
I  say  that  whether  we  are  asleep  or  awake  the  fire  goes  out,  I 
am  told  that  I  am  assuming  a  knowledge  of  ourselves  as  a  sub- 
stance, and  of  the  diflPerence  between  being  asleep  and  awake. 
They  forget  that  to  go  into  a  room,  to  be  asleep  or  awake,  are 
expressions  which  have  a  meaning  in  the  Psychological  Theory 
as  well  as  in  theirs;  that  every  assertion  that  can  be  made 
about  the  external  world,  which  means  anything  on  the  Realistic 
theory,  has  a  parallel  meaning  on  the  Psychological.  Going  into 
a  room,  on  the  Psychological  theory,  is  a  mere  series  of  sensa- 
tions felt,  and  possibilities  of  sensation  inferred,*  but  distin- 
guishable from  every  other  combination  of  sensations  and 
possibilities,  and  which,  with  others  like  to  itself,  forms  as 
vast  and  variegated  a  picture  of  the  universe  as  can  be  had  on 
the  other  theory ;  indeed,  as  I  maintain,  the  very  same  picture. 
The  Psychological  theory  requires  that  we  should  have  a  con- 
ception of  this  series  of  actual  and  contingent  sensations,  as 
distinct  from  any  other ;  but  it  does  not  require  that  we  should 
have  referred  these  sensations  to  a  substance  ulterior  to  all 
sensation  or  possibility  of  sensation.  To  suppose  so,  is  to 
commit  the  same  kind  of  misapprehension,  though  in  a  less 
extreme  degree,  which  Reid,  Stewart,  and  Brown  committed. 

When,  in  attempting  an  intelligible  discussion  of  an  abstruse 

*  This  particular  series  includes  volitions  in  addition  to  sensations ;  but 
the  difference  is  of  no  consequence ;  and  the  theory  would  stand  if  w© 
suppose  ourselves  carried  into  the  room  instead  of  walking  into  it. 


< 


252       APPENDIX    TO    THE    TWO    PRECEDING    CHAPTERS. 

metaphysical  question,  I  have  occasion  to  speak  of  any  com- 
bination of  physical  facts,  I  must  speak  of  it  by  the  only  names 
there  are  for  it.     I  must  employ  language,  every  word  of  which 
expresses,  not  things  as  we  perceive  them,  or  as  we  may  have 
conceived  them  originally,  but  things  as  we  conceive  them  now. 
I  was  addressing  readers,  all  of  whom  had  the  acquired  notion 
of  Matter,  and  nearly  all  of  them  the  belief  in  it :  and  it  was 
my  business  to  show,  to  these  believers  in  Matter,  a  possible 
mode  in  which  the  notion  and  belief  of  it  might  have  been 
acquired,  even  if  Matter,  in  the  metaphysical  meaning  of  the 
terra,  did  not  exist.     In  endeavouring  to  point  out  to  them,  by 
what  facts  the  notion  might  have  been  generated,  it  was  com- 
petent to  me  to  state  those  facts  in  the  language  which  was  not 
only  the  most  intelligible,  but,  to  the  minds  I  was  addressing, 
the  truest.     The  real  paralogism  would  have  been,  if  I  had  said 
anything  implying,  not  the  existence  of  Matter,  but  that  the 
belief  in  it  or  the  notion  of  it  was  part  of  the  facts  by  which  I 
was  maintaining  that  this   belief  and  notion  may  have  been 
generated.     But   in   no   single  instance   have   any  adversaries 
whom  1  am  aware  of,  been  able  to  show  this  :  and  if  they  fairly 
placed  themselves  at  the  point  of  view  of  the  Psychological 
explanation,  they  would  see  that  I  could  not,  in  any  circum- 
.  stances  whatever,  have  been  reduced  to  this  necessity  :  because 
there  is,  as  I  have  said,  for  every  statement  which  can  be  made 
concerning   material    phsenomena    in   terms   of    the    Realistic 
theory,  an  equivalent  meaning  in  terms  of  Sensation  and  Pos- 
sibilities of  Sensation  alone,  and  a  meaning  which  would  justify 
all  the  same  processes  of  thought.     In  fact,  almost  all  philo- 
sophers who  have  narrowly  examined  the  subject,  have  decided 
that  Substance  need  only  be  postulated  as  a  support  for  phseno- 
mena,  or  as  a  bond  of  connexion  to  hold  a  group  or  series  of 
otherwise  unconnected  phsenomena  together  :  let  us  only,  then, 
V   think  away  the  support,  and  suppose  the  phsenomena  to  remain, 
Q/.         .Vand  to  be  held  together  in  the  same  groups  and  series  by  some 
•Xt^''^'' ^oother  agency,  or  without  any  agency  but  an  internal  law,  and 
vt^l/'^y  every  consequence  follows  without  Substance,  for  the  saie  of 
g^      which    Substance  was  assumed.     The   Hindoos   thought   that 
M"  ,  \^  the    earth    required    to   be   supported   by   an   elephant ;    but 
Jipf^      ,  the  earth  turned  out  quite  capable  of  supporting  itself,  and 
^v^      "hanging  self-balanced"  on  its  own ''centre. ^^  Descartes  thought  t-/ 
j{,.»*'  that  a  material  medium  tilling  the  whole  space  between  the  11''' 
j^      -   learth   and   the   sun,  was  required  to  enable  them  to  act  on 
-     ftlkf**^  one  another ;  but  it  has  been  found  sufficient  to  suppose  an 
■^  ,  )    immaterial  law  of  attraction,  and  the  medium  and  its  vortices 
'^»*\^i  dropped  off  as  superfluities. 


if 


APPENDIX   TO    THE   TWO   PRECEDING   CHAPTERS.       253 

To  dispel  some  of  the  haze  which  seems  still  to  hang  about 
the  data  assumed  by  the  Psychological  theory  of  the  belief  in 
Matter,  it  will  be  well  that,  as  I  have  stated  what  laws  and 
capacities,  in  one  word  what  conditions,  that  theory  postulates 
in  the  mind  itself,  I  should  also  state  what  conditions  it  postu- 
lates in  Nature ;  in  that  which,  to  use  the  Kantian  phraseology, 
is  given  to  the  mind,  as  distinguished  from  the  mind's  own 
constitution. 

First,  then,  it  postulates  Sensations ;  and  a  certain  Order  among 
sensations.  And  the  Order  postulated,  is  of  more  kinds  than  one. 

In  the  first  place,  there  is  the  mere  fact  of  succession.     Sen- 
sations exist  before  and  after  one  another.     This  is  as  much  a 
primordial  fact  as  sensation  itself;  it  is  a  feature  always  present 
in  sensation,  and  we  have  the  strongest  ground  that  can  ever 
be  had  for  regarding  it  as  ultimate,  because  every  genesis  we 
assign  to  any  other  fact  of  perception  or  thought,  includes  it 
as  a  condition.     1   shall  be  told,  that  this  is  postulating  the 
reality  of  Time :  and  it  is  so,  if  by  Time  be  understood  an  in- 
definite succession  of  successions,  unequal  in  rapidity.     But  an     \ 
entity  called  Time,  and  regarded  as  not  a  succession  of  succes-    / 
sions,  but  as  something  in  which  the  successions  take  place,  I    j 
do  not  and  need  not  postulate.^     Neither  do  I  decide  whether 
this  inseparable  attribute  of  our  sensations  is  annexed  to  them 
by  the  laws  of  mind,  or  given  in  the  sensations  themselves  ;  nor 
whether,  at  this  great  height  of  abstraction,  the  distinction  does 
not  disappear.     Let  me  say  also,  that  I  have  never  pretended  to  ! 
account  by  association  for  the  idea  of  Time.     It  is  the  seeming 
infinity  of  Time,  as  of  Space,  which,  after  Mr.  James  Mill,  I  ; 
have  tendered  that  explanation  of:  and  that  of  this  it  is  the 
true  and  sufficient  one,  is  to  me  obvious. 

Sensations  are  not  only  successive,  they  are  also  simultaneous  : 
it  often  happens  that  several  of  them  are  felt,  apparently  at  the 
same  instaut.  This  attribute  of  sensations  is  not  so  evidently 
primordial   as   their  succession.     There  are  philosophers  who 

*  Tlii:j  objective  conception  of  Time,  as  holding  the  successions  instead 
of  being  them,  is  probably  suggested  by  our  being  able  to  measure  time, 
and  number  its  parts.  But  what  we  call  measuring  Time  is  only  com-  </ 
paring  successions,  and  measuring  the  length  or  rapidity  of  one  series  of 
successions  by  that  of  another.  Rapidity  of  succession,  indeed,  is  a  phrase 
which  derives  all  its  meaning  from  such  a  comparison.  I  say  that  the 
words  of  a  person  to  whom  I  am  listening  succeed  one  another  more 
rapidly  than  the  tickings  of  a  clock,  because,  after  I  have  heard  a  word 
and  a  ticking  simultaneously,  a  second  word  occurs  before  a  second  ticking. 
The  only  ultimate  facts  or  primitive  elements  in  Time  are  Before  and 
After  ;  which  (the  knowledge  of  opposites  being  one)  involve  the  notion  of  . 
Neither  before  nor  after,  i.e.  simultaneous. 


254       APPENDIX    TO    THE   TWO    PRECEDING    CHAPTERS. 

think  that  the  sensations  deemed  simultaneous  are  very  rapidly 
successive,  their  distinction  from  other  cases  of  succession  being 
that  they  may  succeed  one  another  in  any  order.  I  do  not  agree 
in  this  opinion  ;  but,  even  supposing  it  correct,  we  should  equally 
have  to  postulate  the  distinction.  We  should  have  to  assume 
that  plurality  of  sensations  exists  in  two  modes,  one  consciously 
successive,  the  other  felt  as  simultaneous,  and  that  the  mind  is 
able  to  distinguish  between  the  one  sort  and  the  other. 

Besides  this  twofold  order  inherent  in  sensations,  of  being 
either  successive  or  simultaneous,  there  is  an  order  within  that 
order:  they  are  successive  or  simultaneous  in  constant  combi- 
nations. The  same  antecedent  sensation  is  followed  by  the 
same  consequent  sensation  ;  the  same  sensation  is  accompanied 
by  the  same  set  of  simultaneous  sensations.  I  use  these 
expressions  for  shortness,  for  the  uniformity  of  order  is  not 
quite  so  simple  as  this.  The  consequent  sensation  is  not  always 
actually  felt  after  the  antecedent,  nor  are  all  the  synchronous 
sensations  actually  felt  whenever  one  of  them  is  felt.  But  the 
one  which  is  felt  gives  us  assurance,  grounded  on  experience, 
that  each  of  the  others,  if  not  felt,  is  feelable,  i.e.,  will  be  felt  if 
the  other  facts  be  present  which  are  the  known  antecedent  con- 
ditions of  such  a  sensation  as  it  is.  For  example,  I  have  the 
sensations  of  colour  and  of  a  visible  disk,  which  are  parts  of  our 
present  conception  of  a  cast-iron  ball.  I  infer  that  there  are, 
now  or  presently  to  be  had  by  me,  simultaneously  with  those 
visual  sensations,  another  feeling,  called  the  sensation  of  hard- 
ness. But  I  do  not  have  this  last  sensation  inevitably  and  at  once. 
Why  ?  Because  (as  I  also  know  by  experience)  no  sensation  of 
hardness  is  ever  felt  unless  preceded  by  a  condition,  the  same 
in  all  cases,  but  itself  sensational,  the  sensations  of  muscular 
exertion  and  pressure.  The  visual  sensation  is  synchronous, 
not  necessarily  with  the  actual  sensation  of  hardness,  but  with 
a  present  possibility  of  that  sensation.  When  we  feel  the  one, 
we  are  not  always  feeling  the  other,  but  we  know  that  it  is  to 
be  felt  on  the  ordinary  terms  :  we  know  that  so  soon  as  the 
muscular  sensations  take  place  which  are  the  observed  prelimi- 
nary to  every  sensation  of  hardness,  that  particular  sensation  of 
hardness  will  certainly  be  had,  simultaneously  with  the  visual 
sensation.  This  is  what  is  meant  by  saying  that  a  Body  is  a 
group  of  simultaneous  possibilities  of  sensation,  not  of  simulta- 
neous sensations.  It  rarely  happens  that  the  sensations  which 
enter  into  the  group  can  all  be  experienced  at  once;  because 
many  of  them  are  never  had  without  a  long  series  of  antecedent 
sensations,  including  volitions,  which  may  be  incompatible  with 
the  sensations  and  volitions  necessary  for  having  others.     The 


^  c^  ^u^  y;.w-.  -'/^.v  ^^.,,^,cJ,  ^/  -m/  ^TTv.  >> 


APPENDIX    TO  THE   TWO    PRECEDING    CHAPTERS.       255 


sensations  which  we  receive  when  we  study  the  internal  structure 
of  a  closed  body,  are  not  to  be  obtained  without  having  previously 
the  complex  series  of  sensations  and  volitions  concerned  in  the 
operation  of  opening  it.  The  sensations  we  receive  from  the 
complicated  process  by  which  food  nourishes  us,  must  be  long 
waited  for  after  our  first  sijiht  of  the  food,  and  many  of  them 
are  not  even  then  to  be  had  without  our  being  led  up  to  them 
through  a  long  series  of  muscular  and  other  sensations.  But 
the  very  first  sensations  we  have,  that  are  sufficient  to  identify 
the  group,  guarantee  to  us  the  possibility  or  potentiality  of  all 
the  others.  The  potentiality  becomes  actuality  on  the  occurrence 
of  certain  known  conditions  sine  qua  non  of  each,  which  are 
conditions  not  of  having  that  particular  sensation  at  a  given 
moment,  but  of  having  any  sensation  of  that  kind ;  conditions 
which,  when  analysed,  are  themselves  also  merely  sensational. 
Any  one  who  had  thrown  his  mind,  by  an  act  of  imagination, 
into  the  Psychological  theory,  would  see  at  a  glance  all  these 
applications  and  developments  of  it,  even  if  he  did  not  follow 
them  out  into  detail.  But  men  will  not,  and  mostly  cannot, 
throw  their  minds  into  any  theory  with  which  they  are  not 
familiar ;  and  the  bearings  and  consequences  of  the  Psychological 
theory  will  have  to  be  developed  and  minutely  expounded  innu- 
merable times,  before  it  will  be  seen  as  it  is,  and  have  whatever 
chance  it  deserves  of  being  accepted  as  true. 

I  have  postulated,  first,  Sensations ;  secondly,  succession  and 
siraultaneousness  of  sensations ;  thirdly,  an  uniform  order  in 
their  succession  and  simultaneousness,  such  that  they  are  united 
in  groups,  the  component  sensations  of  which  are  in  such  a 
relation  to  one  another,  that  when  we  experience  one,  we  are 
authorized  to  expect  all  the  rest,  conditionally  on  certain  ante- 
cedent sensations  called  organic,  belonging  to  the  ¥md  of  each. 
This  is  all  we  need  postulate  with  regard  to  the  groups,  con- 
sidered in  themselves,  or  considered  in  relation  to  the  perceiving 
Subject.  Let  us  examine  whether  it  is  necessary  to  postulate 
anything  additional  respecting  the  groups  considered  in  relation 
to  one  another. 

In  Dr.  M'CosVs  opinion,  the  Psychological  theory  overlooks 
this  part  of  the  subject.*  In  quoting  the  analysis  of  our  con- 
ception of  Matter  into  Resistance,  Extension,  and  Figure, 
together  with  miscellaneous  powers  of  exciting  other  sensations, 
he  observes,  "  There  is  a  palpable  omission  here,  for  it  omits 


f    I 


•  M'Cosh,  p.  118.  The  same  observation  applies  to  another  of  my 
critics,  the  writer  in  Blackwood's  Magazine,  who  says  (p.  28)  "  The  quah- 
ties  by  which  they  [Things]  act  upon  each  other,  cannot  be  resolved 
into  any  receptivity  or  subjectivity  of  mine." 


<Ac<C "* C ii^LoCtlc  y    ^l  lo  (ruO^tc*    CuMt«/  dOtna  AtfV,*  C^    &c/t^  ^i 
sAPPENDIX    TO  .THE  -^TWO    pkECEDlNG   CHAPTERS. 

Vt<.«i€r^"  those  powers  by  which  one  body  operates  upon  another ;  thus 
"  the  sun  has  a  power  to  make  wax  white,  and  fire  to  make  lead 
"  fluid."  If  Dr.  M'Cosh  had  entered  even  a  very  little  way  into 
the  mode  of  thought  which  he  is  combating,  he  must  have  seen 
that  after  mentioning  the  attribute  of  exciting  sensations,  it 
could  not  be  necessary  to  add  that  of  making  something  else 
excite  sensations.  If  Body  altogether  is  only  conceived  as  a 
power  of  exciting  sensation^  the  action  of  one  body  upon 
another  is  simply  the  modification  by  one  such  power,  of  the 
sensations  excited  by  another;  or,  to  use  a  difi'erent  expression, 
the  joint  action  of  two  powers  of  exciting  sensations.  It  is  easy 
xj  for  any  one  competent  to  such  enquiries  who  will  make  the 

^^f^  attempt,  to  understand  how  one  group^f  Possibilities  of  Sensa- 
tion can  be  conceived  as  destroying  or  modifying  another  sucli 
group. 

Let  there  be  granted  a  synchronous  group,  connected  by  the 
contingent  simultaneousness  already  described,  which  renders 
each  of  the  component  sensations  a  mark  of  the  possibility  of 
having  all  the  others  ;  while  each,  independently  of  the  others, 
has  conditions  sine  qua  non  of  its  own,  also  sensational,  but  of 
the  kind  which,  in  common  language,  we  call  organic,  and  refer 
to  an  internal  sense.  Let  us  suppose  that  these  organic  condi- 
tions, instead  of  existing  for  one  or  more  sensations  of  the 
group  and  not  for  the  rest,  do  not  at  present  exist  for  any  of 
them.  The  whole  of  the  possibilities  of  sensation  which  form 
the  group,  and  which  mutually  testify  to  each  other's  presence, 
are  now  dormant :  but  they  are  ready  to  start  into  actuality  at 
any  moment,  when  the  conditions  sine  qua  non  which  belong  to 
them  separately  are  realized  :  and  whenever  any  of  them  thus 
starts  up,  it  informs  us  (so  far  as  our  experience  happens  to 
have  reached)  what  others  are  ready  to  do  so  in  the  same 
manner.  This  dormancy  of  all  the  possibilities,  while,  as  real 
possibilities  guaranteeing  one  another,  they  continue  to  exist, 
constitutes,  on  the  Psychological  theory,  the  fact  which  is  at  the 
bottom  of  the  assertion  that  the  body  is  in  existence  when  we 
are  not  perceiving  it.  This  fact  is  all  that  we  need  postulate 
to  account  for  our  conceiving  the  groups  of  Possibilities  of 
Sensation  as  permanent  and  independent  of  us ;  for  our  pro- 
jecting them  into  objectivity  ;  and  for  our  conceiving  them  as 
perhaps  capable  of  being  Possibilities  of  Sensation  to  other 
beings  in  like  manner  as  to  ourselves,  as  soon  as  we  have  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  other  sentient  beings  than  ourselves.  And 
since  v/e  do  actually  recognise  other  sentient  beings  as  existing, 
and  receive  impressions  from  them  which  entirely  accord  with 
this  hypothesis,  we  accept  the  hypothesis  as  a  truth,  and  believe 


APPENDIX    TO   THE   TWO    PRECEDING   CHAPTERS 


<jCUA4^    Ui, 


i.J'  Uri 


UvC 


U. 


UJA 


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,  ',H'V   'S ■ 


that  the  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Seasation  reklly  are  common 
to  ourselves  and  other  beings. 

Havinsr  thus  arrived  at  the  conception  of  an  absent  group  of 
Possibilities,  there  is  surely  no  more  difficulty  in  coaceiving  the 
annihilatiou  or  alteration  of  the  Possibilities  while  absent,  than 
of  the  sensations  themselves  when  present.  The  log  which  I 
saw  on  the  fire  an  hour  ago,  has  been  consumed  and  has  dis- 
appeared when  I  look  again ;  the  Possibilities  of  Sensation 
which  I  called  by  that  name,  are  possibilities  no  longer.  The 
ice  which  I  placed  in  front  of  the  fire  at  the  same  time,  is  now 
water ;  such  Possibilities  of  Sensation  as  form  part  of  the  groups 
called  ice  and  not  of  the  groups  called  water,  have  ceased  and 
given  place  to  others.  All  this  is  intelligible  without  supposing 
the  wood,  the  ice,  or  the  water,  to  be  anything  underneath  or 
beyond  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation.  Why,  then, 
whe  1  I  ascribe  the  disappearance  of  the  wood,  and  the  conver- 
sion of  the  ice  into  water,  to  the  presence  of  the  fire,  must  I 
suppose  the  fire  to  be  something  underneath  a  Possibility  of 
Sensation?  My  experience  informs  me  that  those  other  Pos-^i- 
bilities  of  Sensation  do  not  vanish  or  change  in  the  manner 
mentioned,  unless  another  Possibility  of  Sensation  known  by 
the  name  of  fire,  has  existed  immediately  before,  and  continued 
to  exist  simultaneously  with  the  change.  Changes  in  the  Per- 
manent Possibilities  I  find  to  have  always  for  their  antecedent 
conditions,  other  Permanent  Possibilities,  and  to  be  connected 
with  them  by  an  order  or  law,  as  uniform  as  that  which  connects 
the  elements  of  each  group  with  one  another;  indeed  by  a  still 
stricter  order,  for  the  laws  of  succession,  those  of  Cause  and 
Effect,  are  laws  of  more  rigid  precision  than  those  of  simulta- 
neousness.  But  the  facts,  between  which  the  observed  uni- 
formities of  succession  exist,  are  facts  of  sense;  that  is,  either 
actual  sensations,  or  possibilities  of  sensation  inferred  from  the 
actual.  Thus  the  whole  variety  of  the  facts  of  nature  as  we 
know  it,  is  given  in  the  mere  existence  of  our  sensations,  and 
in  the  laws  or  order  of  their  occurrence.* 

I  have  now  given  an  exposition  of  the  Psychological  Theory, 
and  of  the  mode  in  which  it  accounts  for  what  is  supposed  to 
be  our  natural  conviction  of  the  existence  of  Matter,  from  the 

*  Mr.  O'Hanlon,  in  his  little  pamphlet  (pp.  12  and  l-t)  puts  his  diffi- 
culty on  this  subject  in  the  following  terms :  "  Your  permanent  possi- 
"  bilities  of  sensation  are,  so  long  as  they  are  not  felt,  nothing  actual.  Yet 
"  you  speak  of  change  taking  place  in  them,  and  that  independently  of 
"  our  consciousness  and  of  our  presence  or  absence.  .  .  .  If  the  fire,  apart 
"  from  any  consciousness,  be  some  positive  condition  or  conditions  of 
"  warmth  and  light,  if  the  com  be  some  positive  condition  or  conditions  of 
"  food,  my  thesis  is  made  out,  and  your  Pure  Idealism  falls  to  the  ground. 

S 


/!it*W)> 


258       APPENDIX    TO    THE    TWO    PRECEDING    CHAPTERS. 

objective  point  of  view,  as  I  had  previously  done  from  the  sub- 
jective ;  and  I  think  it  will  be  found  that  the  exposition  does 
not  presuppose  anything  which  I  have  not  expressly  postulated, 
and  that  I  have  not  postulated  any  of  the  facts  or  notions 
which  I  undertake  to  explain.  It  may  be  said  that  I  postulate 
an  Ego — the  sentient  Subject  of  the  sensations.  I  have  stated 
what  subjective,  as  well  as  what  objective  data  I  postulate. 
Expectation  being  one  of  these,  in  so  far  as  reference  to  an 
Ego  is  implied  in  Expectation  I  do  postulate  an  Ego.  But  I 
am  entitled  to  do  so,  for  up  to  this  stage  it  is  not  Self,  but 
Body,  that  I  have  been  endeavouring  to  trace  to  its  origin  as 
an  acquired  notion.^ 

I  now  pass  to  this  very  subject,  the  Ego,  and  to  the  objections 
which  have  been  made  against  the  manner  in  which  it  is  treated 
in  the  preceding  chapter. 

"  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  fire  be  nothing  positive  apart  from  any  con- 
"  sciousness,  then,  since  it  is  nothing  at  all  when  so  apart,  you  can  have 
"  no  right  to  speak  of  modifications  taking  place  in  it  whether  we  are 
"  asleep  or  awake,  present  or  absent." 

I  give  great  credit  to  my  young  antagonist,  not  only  for  the  neatness  of 
his  dilemma,  but  for  having  gone  so  directly  to  the  point  at  which  is  the 
real  stress  of  the  dispute.  But  I  think  he  will  perceive,  from  what  I  have 
said  in  the  text,  in  what  manner  one  may  have  a  right  to  speak  of  modi- 
fications as  taking  place  in  a  possibility.  And  I  think  he  will  be  able  to 
see  that  the  condition  of  a  phsenomenon  needs  not  necessarily  be  anything 
positive,  in  his  sense  of  the  word,  or  objective  ;  it  may  be  anything,  posi- 
tive or  negative,  actuality  or  possibility,  without  which  the  phaenomenon 
would  not  have  occurred,  and  which  may  therefore  be  justly  inferred  from 
its  occtirrence. 

*  Mr.  O'Hanlon  says  (p.  14) :  "  Concediftg.the  entire  truth  of  the  posi- 
"tion,  that  there  are  associations  naturally  and  even  necessarily  generated 
"by  the  order  of  our  sensations,  and  of  our  reminiscences  of  sensation, 
*'  which,  supposing  no  intuition  of  an  external  world  to  have  existed  in 
"  consciousness,  would  inevitably  generate  the  belief,  and  would  cause  it 
"to  be  regarded  akan  intuition; — conceding,  I  say.  for  argument's  sake, 
"  the  entire  truth  of  this  position,  it  may  still  be  true  that  though  we  have 
"  no  intuition  of  the  external  world,  the  inference  that  such  a  world  exists 
"  is  a  legitimate  one."  Undoubtedly  it  may.  Malebranche,  for  instance, 
according  to  whose  system  Matter  is  not  perceived,  nor  in  any  way  cog- 
nised, nor  capable  of  being  cognised,  by  our  minds,  all  the  things  that  we 
see  or  feel  existing  only  as  ideas  in  the  Divine  Mind,  nevertheless' fully 
believed  in  the  reality  of  this  superfluous  wheel  in  the  mechanism  of  the 
universe,  which  merely  revolves  while  the  machinery  does  its  work  inde- 
pendently of  it — because  he  thought  that  God  himself  had  asserted  its 
existence  in  the  Scriptures  :  and  whoever  agrees  with  Malebranche  in  his 
premises  is  likely  to  agree  with  him  in  his  conclusion.  But  with  most 
people,  whether  philosophers  or  common  men,  the  evidence  on  which 
Matter  is  believed  to  exist  independently  of  our  minds,  is  either  that  we 
l>erceive  it  by  our  senses,  or  that  the  notion  and  belief  of  it  come  to  us  by 
an  original  law  of  our  nature.  If  it  be  shown  that  there  is  no  ground  for 
either  of  these  opinions — that  all  we  are  conscious  of  may  be  accounted 


APPENDIX  TO  THE  TWO  PRECEDING  CHAPTERS.   259 

Having  shown  that  in  order  to  account  for  the  belief  in  Matter, 
or,  in  other  words,  in  a  non-ego  supposed  to  be  presented  in  or 
along  with  sensation,  it  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  anything  but 
sensations  and  possibilities  of  sensation  connected  in  groups ;  it 
was  natural  and  necessary  to  enquire  whether  the  Ego,  supposed 
to  be  presented  in  or  along  with  all  consciousness  whatever,  is 
also  an  acquired  notion,  inexplicable  in  the  same  manner.  I  there- 
fore stated  this  phsenomenal  theory  of  the  Ego ;  freed  it  from 
the  prejudice  which  attaches  to  it  on  the  score  of  consequences 
to  which  it  does  not  lead,  the  non-existence,  first,  of  our  fellow- 
creatures,    and    secondly,   of   God;*    but   showed   that   it  has 

for  withont  supposing  that  we  perceive  Matter  by  our  senses,  and  that 
the  notion  and  belief  in  Matter  may  have  come  to  us  by  the  laws  of  our 
constitution  without  being  a  revelation  of  any  objective  reality,  the  main 
evidences  of  Matter  are  at  an  end ;  and  though  1  am  perfectly  willing  to 
listen  to  any  other  evidence,  Malebranche's  argument  is,  I  must  confess, 
quite  as  conclusive  as  any  that  I  expect  to  find. 

*  Some  of  my  critics  have  impugned  the  arguments  of  the  preceding 
chapter  on  this  particular  point  They  have  said  (Mr.  O'Hanlon  is  the 
one  who  has  said  it  with  the  greatest  compactness  and  force)  that  persons, 
equally  with  inanimate  things,  may  be  conceived  as  mere  states  of  my 
own  consciousness ;  that  the  same  processes  of  thought  which,  according 
to  the  Psychological  theory,  can  generate  the  belief  in  Matter  even  if  it 
does  not  exist,  must  be  equally  competent  to  engender  the  belief  of  the 
existence  of  other  Minds  :  and  that  the  principles  of  the  theory  require 
us,  under  the  law  of  Parcimony,  to  conclude  that  if  the  belief  may  have 
been,  it  has  been,  thus  generated :  consequently  the  theor}"-  takes  away  all 
evidence  of  the  existence  of  other  minds,  or  of  other  threads  of  conscious- 
ness than  our  own. 

It  would  undoubtedly  do  so,  if  the  only  evidence  of  the  existence  of  other 
threads  of  consciousness  was  a  natural  belief,  as  a  natural  belief  is  the 
only  evidence  which  rational  persons  now  acknowledge  of  the  existence  of 
M  atter.  But  there  is  other  evidence,  which  does  not  exist  in  the  case  of 
Matter,  and  which  is  as  conclusive,  as  the  other  is  inconclusive.  The 
nature  of  this  has  been  stated,  with  sufficient  fulness  of  development,  in 
the  preceding  chapter,  and  Mr.  O'Hanlon  has  rightly  understood  it  to  be 
a  simple  extension  of  "  the  principles  of  inductive  evidence,  which  experience 
"  shows  hold  good  of  my  states  of  consciousness,  to  a  sphere  without  my 
"  consciousness."  But  he  objects  (p.  7) :  "  The  doing  so  postulates  two 
"  things  :  (a)  That  there  is  a  sphere  beyond  my  consciousness,  the  very 
"  thing  to  be  proved.  (6)  That  the  laws  which  obtain  in  my  conscious-  , 
"  ness,  also  obtain  in  the  sphere  beyond  it." 

To  this  I  reply,  that  it  does  not  postulate  these  two  things,  but,  to  the 
extent  required  by  the  present  question,  proves  them.  There  is  nothing 
in  the  niiture  of  the  inductive  principle  that  confines  it  within  the  limits 
of  my  own  consciousness,  when  it  exceptionally  happens  that  an  inference 
surpassing  the  limits  of  my  consciousness  can  conform  to  inductive 
conditions. 

I  am  aware,  by  experience,  of  a  group  of  Permanent  Possibilities  of 
Sensation  which  I  call  my  body,  and  which  ray  experience  shows  to  bean 
universal  condition  of  every  part  of  my  thread  of  consciousness.  I  am 
also  aware  of  a  great  number  of  other  groups,  resembling  the  one  that  I 

s  2 


260       APPENDIX    TO    THE    TWO    PRECEDING    CHAPTERS. 

intrinsic  difficulties,  which  no  one  has  been  able  to  remove ; 
since  certain  of  the  attributes  comprised  in  our  notion  of  the 
Ego,  and  which  are  at  the  very  foundation  of  it,  namely 
Memory  and  Expectation,  have  no  equivalent  in  Matter,  and 
cannot  be  reduced  to  any  elements  similar  to  those  into  which 
Matter  is  resolved  by  the  Psychological  theory.  Having  stated 
these  facts,  as  inexplicable  by  the  Psychological  theory,  I  left 
them  to  stand  as  facts,  without  any  theory  whatever :  not 
adopting  the  Permanent  Possibility  hypothesis  as  a  sufficient 

call  my  body,  but  which  have  no  connexion,  such  as  that  has,  with  the 
remainder  of  my  thread  of  consciousness.  This  disposes  me  to  draw  an 
inductive  inference,  that  those  other  groups  are  connected  with  other 
threads  of  consciousness,  as  mine  is  with  my  own.  If  the  evidence  stopped 
here,  the  inference  would  be  but  an  hypothesis ;  reaching  only  to  the 
inferior  degree  of  inductive  evidence  called  Analogy,  The  evidence,  how- 
ever, does  not  stop  here ;  for, — having  made  the  supposition  that  real 
feelings,  though  not  experienced  by  myself,  lie  behind  those  phaenomena 
of  my  own  consciousness  which,  from  their  resemblance  to  my  body,  I 
call  other  human  bodies. — I  find  that  my  subsequent  consciousness  pre- 
sents those  very  sensations,  of  speech  heard,  of  movements  and  other 
outward  demeanour  seen,  and  so  forth,  which,  being  the  effects  or  con- 
sequents of  actual  feelings  in  my  own  case,  I  should  expect  to  follow  upon 
those  other  hypothetical  feelings  if  they  really  exist :  and  thus  the  hy- 
pothesis is  verified.  It  is  thus  proved  inductively  that  there  is  a  sphere 
beyond  my  consciousness:  i.e.,  that  there  are  other  consciousnesses  beyond 
it ;  for  there  exists  no  parallel  evidence  in  regard  to  Matter.  And  it  is 
proved  inductively,  that  so  far  as  respects  those  other  consciousnesses, 
linked  to  as  many  groups  of  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation  similar 
to  my  own  body,  the  laws  which  obtain  in  my  consciousness  al.-o  obtain 
in  the  sphere  beyond  it ;  that  those  other  threads  of  consciousness  are 
beings  similar  to  myself. 

The  legitimacy  of  this  process  is  open  to  no  objections,  either  real  or 
imaginary,  but  such  as  may  equally  be  made  against  inductive  inferences 
within  the  sphere  of  our  own  actual  or  possible  consciousness.  Facts  of 
which  I  never  have  had  consciousness  are  as  much  unknown  facts,  as 
much  apart  from  my  actual  experience,  as  facts  of  which  I  cannot  have 
consciousness.  When  I  conclude,  from  facts  that  I  immediatel3r*perceive, 
to  the  existence  of  other  facts  such  as  might  come  into  my  actual  con- 
sciousness (which  the  feelings  of  other  people  never  can)  but  which  never 
did  come  into  it,  and  of  which  I  have  no  evidence  but  an  induction  from 
experience ;  how  do  I  know  that  I  am  concluding  rightly — that  the  infe- 
rence is  warranted,  from  an  actual  consciousness  to  a  contingent  possi- 
bility of  consciousness  which  has  never  become  actual  ?  Surely  because 
this  conclusion  from  experience  is  verified  by  further  experience ;  because 
those  other  experiences  which  I  ought  to  have  if  my  inference  was  correct, 
really  present  themselves.  This  verification,  which  is  the  source  of  all 
my  reliance  on  induction,  justifies  the  same  reliance  wherever  it  is  found. 
The  alien  threads  of  consciousness  of  which  I  presume  the  existence  from 
the  analogy  of  my  own  body,  manifest  the  truth  of  the  presumption  by 
visual  and  tactual  effects  within  my  own  consciousness,  resembling  those 
which  follow  from  sensations,  thoughts,  or  emotions  felt  by  myself  The 
reality  beyond   the   sphere   of   my  consciousness  rests  on  the  twofold 


APPENDIX   TO   THE  TWO    PRECEDING   CHAPTERS.         261 

theory  of  Self  in  spite  of  the  objections  to  it,  as  some  of  my 
critics  have  imagined,  and  have  wasted  no  small  amount  of 
argument  and  sarcasm  in  exposing  the  untenability  of  such  a 
position :  neither,  on  the  other  hand,  did  I,  as  others  have 
supposed,  accept  the  common  theory  of  Mind,  as  a  so-called 
Substance.  Since  the  state  in  which  I  profess  to  leave  the 
question  has  been  so  ill  understood,  it  is  incumbent  on  me  to 
explain  myself  more  fully. 

Since  the  fact  which  alone  necessitates  the  belief  in  an  Ego, 

evidence,  of  its  antecedents,  and  its  consequents.     It  is  an  inference  up-  f 
wards  from  the  manifestations,  and  downwards  from  the  antecedent  con-  1 
ditions  ;  and  whichever  of  these  inferences  is  first  drawn,  the  other  is  its 
veriiication. 

I  venture  to  hope  that  these  considerations  may  remove  Mr.  O'Hanlon's 
difficulty.  But  whatever  the  difficulty  may  be,  it  is  not  peculiar  to  the 
Psychological  theory,  but  has  equally  to  be  encountered  on  every  other. 
For  no  one  supposes  that  other  people's  feelings  or  states  of  consciousness 
are  a  matter  of  direct  intuition  to  us,  or  of  JS'atural  Belief.  We  do  not 
directly  perceive  other  minds :  their  reality  is  not  known  to  us  imme- 
diately, but  by  means  of  evidence.  And  there  is  no  evidence  by  which  it 
can  be  proved  to  me  that  there  is  a  conscious  being  within  each  of  the 
human  bodies  that  I  see,  without  a  process  of  induction  involving  the  very 
same  assumptions  which  are  required  by  the  Psychological  Theory. 

I  will  delay  the  reader  a  few  moments  more  while  I  reply  to  a  minor 
difficulty  of  Mr.  O'Hanlon.  He  urges,  that  the  Psychological  theory 
inserts  an  alien  consciousness  between  two  consciousnesses  of  my  own,  as 
the  etFect  of  one  of  them  and  the  cause  of  the  other.  "  A  boy  cuts  his 
"  finger  and  screams.  The  knife,  the  blood,  and  the  boy's  body  are  only 
"  (in  Mr.  Mill's  view)  actual  and  possible  groups  of  my  sensations,  and 
"  the  scream  is  an  actual  sensation.  I  infer,  continuing  to  accept  Mr. 
"  Mill's  theory,  that  between  the  scream  and  the  other  sensations,  namely 
"between  two  sets  of  states  of  my  own  consciousness,  a  foreign  conscious- 
"  ness  had  the  feeling  I  call  pain,  and  also  that  the  sensations  of  cutting 
"  its  finger,  the  same  sensations,  belong  as  much  to  it  as  to  me,  combined 
"  with  certain  additions,  and  in  a  very  peculiar  manner.  Yet  if  I  was  not 
"  by,  the  bay,  the  knife,  the  blood,  the  scream,  would  only  exist  poten- 
"tiaUy"  (pp.  8,  9).  Whatever  seemiug  absurdity,  and  real  confusion, 
exist  here,  are  only  attributable  to  the  fact,  that  Mr.  O'Hanlon,  notwith- 
standing his  acuteness,  has  not  yet  sufficiently  thought  himself  into  the 
theory  he  denies.  On  the  same  evidence  on  which  I  recognise  foreign  1  'i^*f^ 
threads  of  consciousness,  I  believe  that  the  Permanent  Possibilities  of 
Sensation  are  common  to  them  and  to  me ;  but  not  the  actual  sensations. 
The  evidence  proves  to  me,  that  although  the  knife,  the  blood,  and  the 
boy's  body  would,  if  I  were  absent,  be  mere  potentialities  of  sensation  k^i' 
relatively  to  me,  the  similar  potentialities  which  L  infer  to  exist  in  him  \  , 
have  been  realized  as  actual  sensations ;  and  it  is  as  conditions  of  the  ' 

sen.sations  in  him,  and  not  of  sensations  in  me,  that  they  form  a  part  of 
the  series  of  causes  and  effects  which  take  place  out  of  my  consciousness. 
Tbe  chain  of  causation  is  the  following :  1.  A  modification  in  a  set  of 
Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation  common  to  the  boy  and  me.  2.  A 
sensation  of  pain  in  the  boy,  not  felt  by  me.  6.  The  scream,  which  is  a 
sensation  in  me. 


y^ 


262        APPENDIX   TO    THE   TWO   PRECEDING  CHAPTERS. 

the  one  fact  which  the  Psychological  theory  cannot  explain,  is 
the  fact  of  Memory  (for  Expectation  I  hold  to  be,  both  psycho- 
logically and  logically,  a  consequence  of  Memory),  I  see  no 
reason  to  think  that  there  is  any  cognizance  of  an  Ego  until 
Memory  commences.  There  seems  no  ground  for  believing, 
with  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  Mr.  Mansel,  that  the  Ego  is  an 
original  presentation  of  consciousness  ;  that  the  mere  impression 
on  our  senses  involves,  or  carries  with  it,  any  consciousness  of 
a  Self,  any  more  than  I  believe  it  to  do  of  a  Kot-self.  Our 
very  notion  of  a  Self  takes  its  commencement  (there  is  every 
reason  to  suppose)  from  the  representation  of  a  sensation  in 
memory,  when  awakened  by  the  only  thing  there  is  to  awaken 
it  before  any  associations  have  been  formed,  namely,  the  occur- 
rence of  a  subsequent  sensation  similar  to  the  former  one.  The 
fact  of  recognising  a  sensation,  of  being  reminded  of  it,  and,  as 
we  say,  remembering  that  it  has  been  felt  before,  is  the  simplest 
and  most  elementary  fact  of  memory  :  and  the  inexplicable  tie, 
or  law,  the  organic  union  (as  Professor  Masson  calls  it)  wHTcE 
connects  the  present  consciousness  with  the  pa<'t  one,  ot  which_ 
it  reminds  me,  is  as  near  as  I  think  we  can  get  to  a  positive 
conception  of  Self  That  there  is  something  real  in  this  tie^ 
real  as  the  sensations  themselves,  and  not  a  mere  product  of 
the  laws  of  thought  without  any  fact  corresponding  to  it,  I 
hold  to  be  indubitable.  The  precise  nature  of  the  process  by 
which  we  cognise  it,  is  open  to  much  dispute.  Whether  we 
are  directly  conscious  of  it  in  the  act  of  remembrance,  as  we 
are  of  succession  in  the  fact  of  having  successive  sensations,  or 
whether,  according  to  the  opinion  of  Kant,  we  are  not  conscious 
of  a  Self  at  all,  but  are  compelled  to  assume  it  as  a  uecessaiy 
condition  of  Memory,^  I  do  not  undertake  to  decide.  But  this 
original  element,  which  has  no  community  of  nature  with 
any  of  the  things  answering  to  our  names,  and  to  which  we 
cannot  give  any  name  but  its  own  peculiar  one  without  imply- 
ing some  false  or  ungrounded  theory,  is  the  Ego,  or  Self.  As 
such,  1  ascribe  a  reality  to  the  Ego — to  my  own  Mind — dif- 
ferent from  that  real  existence  as  a  Permanent  Possibility, 
which  is  the  only  reality  1  acknowledge  in  Matter :  and  by  fair 

*  Mr.  Mahaffy  thinks  that  the  question  may  be  decided  in  favour  of 
Kant  on  the  evidence  of  consciousness  itself.  "  Are  you,"  he  asks  (p.  Ivi.) 
"conscious  of  being  presented  with  yourself  as  a  substance?  or  are  you 
"  only  conscious  that  in  every  act  of  thought  you  must  presuppose  a  per- 
"  manent  self,  and  always  refer  it  to  self,  while  still  that  self  you  cannot 
"  grasp,  and  it  remains  a  hidden  basis  upon  which  you  erect  the  structure 
"of  your  thoughts ?  Which  of  these  opinions  will  most  men  adopt .? 
"  After  all,  Kanfs  view  is  the  simpler,  and  the  more  consistent  with  the 
"  ordinary  language." 


APPENDIX  TO  THE   TWO   PRECEDING  CHAPTERS.        263' 

experiential  inference  from  that  one  Ego,  I  ascribe  the  same 
reality  to  other  Egoes,  or  Minds. 

Having  thus,  as  I  hope,  more  clearly  defined  my  position  in 
regard  to  the  reality  of  the  Ego,  considered  as  a  question  of 
Ontology,  I  return  to  my  first  starting  point,  the  Relativity  of  / 
human  knowledge,  and  affirm  (being  here  in  entire  accordance  Jv 
with  Sir  W.  Hamilton)  that  whatever  be  the  nature  of  the  real 
existence  we  are  compelled  to  acknowledge  in  Mind,  the  Mind 
is  only  known  to  itself  phaeuomeually,  as  the  series  of  its  feel- 
ings or  consciousnesses.  We  are  forced  to  apprehend  every 
part  ot  the  series  as  linked  with  the  other  parts  by  something 
in  common,  which  is  not  the  feelings  themselves,  any  more  than 
the  succession  of  the  feelings  is  the  feelings  themselves  :  and  as 
that  which  is  the  same  in  the  first  as  in  the  second,  in  the 
second  as  in  the  third,  in  the  third  as  in  the  fourth,  and  so  on, 
must  be  the  same  in  the  first  and  in  the  fiftieth,  this  common 
element  is  a  permanent  element.  But  beyond  this,  we  can 
affirm  nothing  of  it  except  the  states  of  consciousness  them- 
selves. The  feelings  or  consciousnesses  which  belong  or  have 
belonged  to  it,  and  its  possibilities  of  having  more,  are  the 
only  tacts  there  are  to  be  asserted  of  Self — the  only  positive 
attributes,  except  permanence,  which  we  can  ascribe  to  it.  In 
consequence  of  this,  I  occasionally  use  the  words  "  mind  "  and 
"  thread  of  consciousness^^  interchangeably,  and  treat  Mind  as 
existing,  and  Mind  as  known  to  itself,  as  convertible :  but  this 
is  only  for  brevity,  and  the  explanations  which  I  have  now  given 
iQust  always  be  takeu  as  implied.* 

Dr.  M'Cosh.  has  renewed  his  attack  upon  the  doctrine  of  Permanent 
Possibilities.  But  I  cannot  find  in  his  later  remarks,  so  far  as  they  are  to 
the  purpose,  much  more  than  a  repetition  of  his  earlier.  On  some  minor 
points  he  does  present  some  novelties.  He  is  severe  upon  me  for  hesi- 
tating to  decide  whether  the  attribute  of  succession  as  between  our  sensa- 
tions is  given  in  the  sensations  themselves,  or  annexed  to  them  by  a  law 
of  the  mind.  The  first  supposition  he  characterizes  as  a  mere  verbal 
generahzation  like  those  which  I  have  laid  to  the  charge  of  Oondillac ; 
forgetting  the  opinion  held  by  some  acute  metaphysicians,  and  which  is 
no  ulere  verbal  generalization,  that  to  have  sensations  in  succession  is  only 
the  same  thing  as  having  more  sensations  than  one.  The  other  supposi- 
tion, that  the  attribute  of  succession  is  annexed  to  our  sensations  by  a 
law  of  the  mind,  he  says  is  giving  to  the  mind  the  '"  power  of  generating 
"  in  the  course  of  its  exercise  a  totally  new  idea,"  an  opinion,  he  says, 
utterly  inconsistent  with  my  "empirical  theory;"  he  does  not  say  with 
what  theory.  In  any  scheme  of  human  knowledge  that  I  am  able  to 
form,  the  resemblances  and  the  successions  and  coexistences  of  our  sensa- 
tions are  real  facts,  and  objects  of  direct  apprehension.  Whether  we  are 
said  to  apprehend  them  by  our  senses  or  by  our  minds  (which  is  the  real 
meaning  of  the  alternative  1  have  left  open)  affects  no  theory  of  mine, 
and  is  to  me  a  matter  of  indifference. 

The  most  curious  part  of  Dr.  M'Cosh's  reply  is  that  he  thinks,  accord- 


2G4       APPENDIX   TO    THE  TWO    PRECEDING   CHAPTERS. 

ingto  my  "theory"  there  is  no  difference  between  sensations  and  thoughts. 
According  to  him,  if  I  am  right,  the  facts  of  external  nature  being  only 
possibilities  of  sensation,  ought  to  succeed  one  another  according  to 
"  mental  laws,  say  the  laws  of  association."  The  reader  will  scarcely 
believe  that  I  am  not  misrepresenting  Dr.  M'Cosh  ;  but  I  refer  him  to 
the  article,  pp.  345  and  346. 

Dr.  M'Cosh  still  maintains  that  the  action  of  bodies  on  one  another 
cannot  be  accounted  for  on  the  hypothesis  of  Immateriality,  takes  credit 
for  having,  on  this  point,  detected  me  in  an  oversight,  and  seems  to  con- 
sider the  answer  I  was  "  obliged"  to  give  him  as  an  afterthought  of  my 
own.  This  only  proves  that  Dr.  M'Cosh  has  forgotten,  if  he  ever  knew, 
the  very  elements  of  the  Berkeleian  controversy.  Whoever  knows  any- 
thing of  that,  has  got  far  beyond  the  stage  of  thought  at  which  Dr. 
M'Cosh  remains.  Berkeley  would  indeed  have  been  easily  answered  if 
his  doctrine  could  give  no  account  of  the  greater  part  of  all  the  phae- 
nomena  of  physical  nature. 


265 


CHAPTER   XIII. 


THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF    THE    PRIMARY   QUALITIES 

OF    xMATTER. 

For  the  reasons  which  have  been  set  forth,  I  conceive 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  to  be  wrong  in  his  statement  that  a 
Self  and  a  Not-self  are  immediately  apprehended  in  our 
primitive  consciousness.  We  have,  in  all  probability,  no 
notion  of  Not-self,  until  after  considerable  experience  of 
the  recurrence  of  sensations  according  to  fixed  laws,  and 
in  groups.*  Nor  is  it  credible  that  the  first  sensation 
which  we  experience  awakens  in  us  any  notion  of  an 
Ego  or  Self.  To  refer  it  to  an  Ego  is  to  consider  it  as 
part  of  a  series  of  states  of  consciousness,  some  portion 
of  which  is  already  past.  The  identification  of  a  present 
state  with  a  remembered  state  cognised  as  past,  is  what, 
to  my  thinking,  constitutes  the  cognition  that  it  is  I  who 
feel  it.  "  I"  means  he  who  saw,  touched,  or  felt  some- 
thing yesterday  or  the  day  before.  No  single  sensation 
can  suggest  personal  identity :  this  requires  a  series  of 
sensations,  thought  of  as  forming  a  line  of  succession, 
and  summed  up  in  thought  into  a  Unity. 

But  (however  this  may  be)  throughout  the  whole  of  our 
sensitive  life  except  its  first  beginnings,  we  unquestion- 
ably refer  our  sensations  to  a  me  and  a  not-me.  As  soon  as 
1  have  formed,  on  the  one  hand,  the  notion  of  Permanent 

*  In  the  first  edition  I  said  :  "  But  without  the  notion  of  not-self,  we 
"  cannot  have  that  of  self,  which  is  contrasted  withil."  In  saying  this  I 
overlooked  the  fact,  that  my  own  sensations  and  other  feelings,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  what  I  call  Myself,  are  a  sufficient  Not-self  to  make  the 
Self  apprehensible.  The  contrast  necessary  to  all  cognition  is  sufficiently 
provided  for  by  the  antithesis  between  the  Ego  and  particular  modih- 
cations  of  the  Jiigo. 


266  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF    THE 

Possibilities  of  Sensation,  and  on  the  otber,  of  that  con- 
tinued series  of  feelings  which  I  call  my  life,  both  these 
.notions  are,  by  an  irresistible  association,  recalled  by 
every  sensation  I  have.  They  represent  two  things,  with 
both  of  which  the  sensation  of  the  moment,  be  it  what 
it  may,  stands  in  relation,  and  I  cannot  be  conscious  of 
the  sensation  without  being  conscious  of  it  as  related  to 
these  two  things.  They  have  accordingly  received 
relative  names,  expressive  of  the  double  relation  in 
question.  The  thread  of  consciousness  which  I  apprehend 
the  sensation  as  a  part  of,  is  the  subject  of  the  sensation. 
The  group  of  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation  to 
which  I  refer  it,  and  which  is  partially  realized  and 
actualized  in  it,  is  the  object  of  the  sensation.  The 
sensation  itself  ought  to  have  a  correlative  name;  or 
rather,  ought  to  have  two  such  names,  one  denoting  the 
sensation  as  opposed  to  its  Subject,  the  other  denoting 
it  as  opposed  to  its  Object.  But  it  is  a  remarkable  fact, 
that  this  necessity  has  not  been  felt,  and  that  the  need 
of  a  correlative  name  to  every  relative  one  has  been  con- 
sidered to  be  satisfied  by  the  terms  Object  and  Subject 
themselves;  the  object  and  the  subject  not  being  at- 
tended to  in  the  relation  which  they  respectively  bear 
to  the  sensation,  but  being  regarded  as  directly  corre- 
lated with  one  another.  It  is  true  that  they  are  related 
to  one  another,  but  only  through  the  sensation  :  their 
relation  to  each  other  consists  in  the  peculiar  and  dif- 
lerent  relation  in  which  they  severally  stand  to  the 
sensation.  We  have  no  conception  of  either  Subject  or 
Object,  either  Mind  or  Matter,  except  as  somethmg  to 
which  we  refer  our  sensations,  and  whatever  other  feel- 
ings we  are  conscious  of.  The  very  existence  of  them 
both,  so  far  as  cognisable  by  us,  consists  only  in  the 
relation  they  respectively  bear  to  our  states  of  feeling. 
Their  relation  to  each  other  is  only  the  relation  between 
those  two  relations.  The  immediate  correlatives  are 
not  the  pair.  Object,  Subject,  but  the  two  pairs,  Object, 
Sensation  objectively  considered ;  Subject,  Sensation 
subjectively  considered.     The  reason  why  this  is  over- 


PRIMARY    QUALITIES    OF    MATTER.  267 

looked,  might  easily  be  shown,  and  would  furnish 
a  good  illustration  of  that  important  part  of  the 
Laws  of  Association  which  may  be  termed  the  Laws  of 
Obliviscence. 

I  have  next  to  speak  of  a  psychological  fact,  also  a 
consequence  of  the  Laws  of  Association,  and  without  a 
full  appreciaticm  of  which,  the  idea  of  Matter  can  only 
be  understood  in  its  original  groundwork,  but  not  in  the 
superstructure  which  the  laws  of  our  actual  experience 
have  raised  upon  it.  There  are  certain  of  our  sensations 
which  we  are  accustomed  principally  to  consider  subjec- 
tively, and  others  which  we  are  principally  accustomed 
to  consider  objectively.  In  the  case  of  the  first,  the 
relation  in  which  we  most  frequently,  most  habitually,  and 
therefore  most  easily  consider  them,  is  their  relation  to 
the  series  of  feelings  of  which  they  form  a  part,  and 
which,  consolidated  by  thought  into  a  single  conception, 
is  termed  the  Subject.  In  the  case  of  the  second,  the 
relation  in  which  we  by  preference  contemplate  them  is 
their  relation  to  some  group,  or  some  kind  of  group,  of 
Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation,  the  present  exis- 
tence of  which  is  certified  to  us  by  the  sensation  we  are  at , 
the  moment  feeling — and  which  is  termed  the  Object. 
The  difference  between  these  two  classes  of  our  sensa- 
tions, answers  to  the  distinction  made  by  the  majority 
of  philosophers  between  the  Primary  and  the  Secondary 
Qualities  of  Matter. 

We  can,  of  course,  think  of  all  or  any  of  our  sensa- 
tions in  relation  to  their  Objects,  that  is,  to  the  perma- 
nent groups  of  possibilities  of  sensation  to  which  we 
mentally  refer  them.  This  is  the  main  distinction  be- 
tween our  sensations,  and  what  we  regard  as  our  purely 
mental  feelings.  These  we  do  not  refer  to  any  groups 
of  Permanent  Possibilities ;  and  in  regard  to  them  the 
distinction  of  Subject  and  Object  is  merely  nominal. 
These  feelings  have  no  Objects,  except  by  metaphor. 
There  is  nothing  but  the  feeling  and  its  Subject.  Meta- 
physicians are  obliged  to  call  the  feeling  itself  the 
object.     Our  sensations,  on  the  contrary,   have  all  of 


268  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF    THE 

them  ohjeots  ;  tliey  all  are  capable  of  being  classed  under 
some  group  of  Permanent  Possibilities,  and  being  re- 
ferred to  the  presence  of  that  particular  set  of  possibili- 
ties as  the  antecedent  condition  or  cause  of  their  own 
existence.  There  are,  however,  some  of  our  sensations, 
in  our  consciousness  of  which  the  reference  to  their 
Object  does  not  play  so  conspicuous  and  predominant  a 
part  as  in  others.  This  is  particularly  the  case  with 
sensations  which  are  highly  interesting  to  us  on  their 
own  account,  and  on  which  we  willingly  dwell,  or  which 
by  their  intensity  compel  us  to  concentrate  our  attention 
on  them.  These  are,  of  course,  our  pleasures  and  pains. 
In  the  case  of  these,  our  attention  is  naturally  given  in 
a  greater  degree  to  the  sensations  themselves,  and  only 
in  a  less  degree  to  that  whose  existence  they  are  marks 
of.  And  of  the  two  conceptions  to  which  they  stand  in 
relation,  the  one  to  wrhich  we  have  most  tendency  to 
refer  them  is  the  Subject ;  because  our  pleasures  and  pains 
are  of  no  more  importance  as  marks  than  any  of  our  other 
sensations,  but  are  of  very  much  more  importance  than 
any  others  as  parts  of  the  thread  of  consciousness  which 
,  constitutes  our  sentient  life.  Many  indeed  of  our  in- 
ternal bodily  pains  we  should  hardly  refer  to  an  Object 
at  all,  were  it  not  for  the  knowledge,  late  and  slowly 
acquired,  that  they  are  always  connected  with  a  local 
organic  disturbance,  of  which  we  have  no  present  con- 
sciousness, and  which  is  therefore  a  mere  Possibility  of 
Sensation.  Those  of  our  sensations,  on  the  contrary, 
which  are  almost  indifferent  in  themselves,  our  attention 
does  not  dwell  on ;  our  consciousness  of  them  is  too 
momentary  to  be  distinct,  and  we  pass  on  from  them  to 
the  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation  which  they  are 
the  signs  of,  and  which  alone  are  important  to  us.  We 
hardly  notice  the  relation  between  these  sensations  and 
the  subjective  chain  of  consciousness  of  which  they  form 
so  extremely  insignificant  a  part :  the  sensation  is  hardly 
anything  to  us  but  the  link  which  draws  into  our  con- 
sciousness a  group  of  Permanent  Possibilities  ;  this  group 
is  the  only  thing  distinctly  present  to  our  thoughts.    The 


PRIMARY    QDALITIES   OF    MATTER.  2o9 

unimpressive  organic  sensation  merges  in  the  mere  mental 
suggestion,  and  we  seem  to  cognise  directly  that  which 
we  think  of  only  by  association,  and  know  only  by 
inference.  Sensation  is  in  a  manner  blotted  out,  and 
Perception  seems  to  be  installed  in  its  place.  This  truth 
is  expressed,  though  not  with  sufficient  distinctness,  in 
a  favourite  doctrine  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  that  in  the 
operations  of  our  senses  Sensation  is  greatest  when  Per- 
ception is  least,  and  least  when  it  is  greatest ;  or,  as 
he,  by  a  very  inaccurate  use  of  mathematical  language, 
expresses  it,  Sensation  and  Perception  are  in  the  inverse 
ratio  of  one  another. 

With  regard  to  those  sensations  which,  without  being 
absolutely  indifferent,  are  not,  in  any  absorbing  degree, 
painful  or  pleasurable,  we  habitually  think  of  them  only 
as  connected  with,  or  proceeding  from.  Objects.  And  I 
am  disposed  to  believe,  contrary  to  the  opinion  of  many 
philosophers,  that  any  of  our  senses,  or  at  all  events  any 
combination  of  more  than  one  sense,  would  have  been 
sufficient  to  give  us  some  idea  of  Matter.  If  we  had 
only  the  senses  of  smell,  taste,  and  hearing,  but  had  the 
sensations  according  to  fixed  laws  of  coexistence  so  that 
whenever  we  had  any  one  of  them  it  marked  to  us  a 
present  possibility  of  having  all  the  others,  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  we  should  have  formed  the  notion  of 
groups  of  possibilities  of  sensation,  and  should  have 
referred  every  particular  sensation  to  one  of  these  groups, 
which,  in  relation  to  all  the  sensations  so  referred  to  it, 
would  have  become  an  Object,  and  would  have  been 
invested  in  our  thoughts  with  the  permanency  and 
externality  which  belong  to  matter.  But  though  we 
might,  in  this  supposed  case,  have  had  an  idea  of 
Matter,  that  idea  would  necessarily  have  been  of  a  very 
different  complexion  from  what  we  now  have.  For,  as 
we  are  actually  constituted,  our  sensations  of  smell, 
'  taste,  and  hearing,  and  as  I  believe  (with  the  great 
majority  of  philosophers)  those  of  sight  also,  are  not 
grouped  together  directly,  but  through  the  connexion 
which  they  all  have,  by  laws  of  coexistence  or  of  causa- 


270  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF    THE 

tion,  with  the  sensations  which  are  referable  to  the  sense 
of  touch  and  to  the  muscles ;  those  which  answer  to  the 
terms  Resistance,  Extension,  and  Figure.  These,  there- 
fore, become  the  leading  and  conspicuous  elements  in 
all  the  groups :  where  these  are,  the  group  is :  every 
other  member  of  the  group  presents  itself  to  our 
thoughts,  less  as  what  it  is  in  itself,  than  as  a  mark  of 
1  these.  As  the  entire  group  stands  in  the  relation  of 
'  Object  to  any  one  of  the  component  sensations  which  is 
realized  at  a  given  moment,  so  do  these  special  parts  of 
the  group  become,  in  a  manner,  Object,  in  relation  not 
only  to  actual  sensations,  but  to  all  the  remaining  Pos- 
sibilities of  Sensation  which  the  group  includes.  The 
Permanent  Possibilities  of  sensations  of  touch  and  of 
the  muscles,  form  a  group  within  the  group^ — a  sort  of 
inner  nucleus,  conceived  as  n.ore  fundamental  than  the 
rest,  on  which  all  the  other  possibilities  of  sensation 
included  in  the  group  seem  to  depend ;  these  being 
regarded,  in  one  point  of  view,  as  effects,  of  which  that 
nucleus  is  the  cause,  in  another  as  attributes,  oi'  which 
it  is  the  substratum  or  substance.  In  this  manner  our 
conception  of  Matter  comes  ultimately  to  consist  of 
Resistance,  Extension,  and  Figure,  together  with  mis- 
cellaneous powers  of  exciting  other  sensations.  These 
three  attributes  become  its  essential  constituents,  and 
where  these  are  not  found,  we  hesitate  to  apply  the 
name. 

Of  these  properties,  which  are  consequently  termed 
the  Primary  Qualities  of  Matter,  the  most  fundamental 
is  Resistance  :  as  is  proved  by  numerous  scientific  con- 
troversies. When  the  question  arises  whether  something 
which  affects  our  senses  in  a  peculiar  way,  as  for  instance 
whether  Heat,  or  Light,  or  Electricity,  is  or  is  not  Matter, 
what  seems  always  to  be  meant  is,  does  it  offer  any, 
however  trifling,  resistance  to  motion  ?  If  it  were  shown 
that  it  did,  this  would  at  once  terminate  all  doubt. 
That  Resistance  is  only  another  name  for  a  sensation  of 
our  muscular  frame,  combined  with  one  of  touch,  has 
been  pointed  out  by  many  philosophers,  and  can  scarcely 


PRIMARY    QUALITIES   OP    MATTER.  271 

any  longer  be  questioned.  When  we  contract  the 
muscles  of  our  arm,  either  by  an  exertion  of  will,  or  by 
an  involuntary  discharge  of  our  spontaneous  nervous 
activity,  the  contraction  is  accompanied  by  a  state  of 
sensation,  which  is  different  according  as  the  locomotion 
consequent  on  the  muscular  contraction  continues  freely, 
or  meets  with  an  impediment.  In  the  former  case,  the 
sensation  is  that  of  motion  through  empty  space.  After 
having  had  (let  us  suppose)  this  experience  several  times 
repeated,  we  suddenly  have  a  different  experience :  the 
series  of  sensations  accompanying  the  motion  of  our 
arm  is  brought,  without  intention  or  expectation  on  our 
part,  to  an  abrupt  close.  This  interruption  would  not, 
of  itself,  necessarily  suggest  the  belief  in  an  external 
obstacle.  The  hindrance  might  be  in  our  organs ;  it 
might  arise  from  paralysis,  or  simple  loss  of  power 
throutjli  fatifjue.  But  in  either  of  these  cases,  the 
muscles  would  not  have  been  contracted,  and  we  should 
not  have  had  the  sensation  which  accompanies  their 
contraction.  We  may  have  had  the  will  to  exert  our 
muscular  force,  but  the  exertion  has  not  taken  place.* 
If  it  does  take  place,  and  is  accompanied  by  the  usual 
muscular  sensation,  but  the  distinctive  feeling  which  [ 
have  called  the  sensation  of  motion  in  empty  space 
does  not  follow,  we  have  what  is  called  the  feeling  of 
Resistance,  or  in  other  words,  of  muscular  action  im- 
peded ;  and  that  feeling  is  the  fundamental  element  in 
the  notion  of  Matter  which  results  from  our  common 
experience.  But  simultaneously  with  this  feeling  of 
Resistance,  we  have  also  feelings  of  touch ;  sensations  of 

*  Sir  W.  Hamilton  thinks  (Dissertations  on  Reid,  pp.  854,  855)  that 
we  are  conscious  of  resistance  through  a  "  mental  effort  or  nisus  to  move," 
distinct  both  from  the  original  will  to  move,  and  from  the  muscular  sensa- 
tion :  "for  we  are,"  he  says,  "conscious  of  it,  though,  by  a  narcosis  or 
"  stupor  of  the  sensitive  nerves  we  lose  aU  feeling  of  the  movement  of  the 
"  limb  ;  though  by  a  paralysis  of  the  motive  nerves  no  moment  of  the  limb 
"  follows  the  mental  effort  to  move ;  though  by  an  abnormal  stimulus  of  the 
"  muscular  fibres,  a  contraction  in  them  is  caused  even  in  opposition  to  our 
"  will."  If  all  this  is  true— though  by  what  experiments  it  has  been  sub- 
stantiated wo  are  not  told — it  does  not  by  any  means  show  that  there  is  a 
mental  nisus  not  physical,  but  merely  removes  the  seat  of  the  nisus  from 
the  nerves  to  the  brain. 


272  THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF    THE 

whicli  the  orsfans  are  not  the  nerves  diffused  through  our 
muscles,  but  those  which  form  a  network  under  the  skin  ; 
the  sensations  which  are  produced  by  passive  contact 
with  bodies,  without  muscular  action.  As  these  skjn 
sensations  of  simple  contact  invariably  accompany  the 
muscular  sensation  of  resistance — for  we  must  touch 
the  object  before  we  can  feel  it  resisting  our  pressure — • 
there  is  early  formed  an  inseparable  association  between 
them.  Whenever  we  feel  resistance  we  have  first  felt 
contact.  Whenever  we  feel  contact,  we  know  that  were 
we  to  exercise  muscular  action,  we  should  feel  more  or 
less  resistance.  In  this  manner  is  formed  the  first 
fundamental  group  of  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensa- 
tion ;  and  as  we  in  time  recognise  that  all  our  other 
sensations  are  connected  in  point  of  fact  with  Permanent 

"  Possibilities  of  resistance — that  in  coexistence  with  them 
w^e  should  always,  by  sufficient  search,  encounter  some- 
thing which  would  give  us  the  feeling  of  contact  com- 
bined with  ihe  muscular  sensation  of  resistance ;  our 
idea  of  Matter,  as  a  Resisting  Cause  of  miscellaneous 
sensations,,  is  now  constituted. 

Let  us  observe,  in  passing,  the  elementary  example 
here  afforded  of  the  Law  of  Inseparable  Association, 
and  the  efficacy  of  that  law  to  construct  what,  after  it 
has  been  constructed,  is  undistinguishable,  by  any  direct 
interrogation  of  consciousness,  from  an  intuition.  The 
sensation  produced  by  the  simple  contact  of"  an  object 
with  the  skin,  without  any  pressure — or  even  with  pres- 
sure, but  without  any  muscular  reaction  against  it — is 
no  more  likely  than  a  sensation  of  warmth  or  cold  would 

•  be,  to  be  spontaneously  referred  to  any  cause  external 
to  ourselves.  But  when  the  constant  coexistence,  in 
experience,  of  this  sensation  of  contact  with  that  of 
Kesistance  to  our  muscular  effort  whenever  such  effort 
is  made,  has  erected  the  former  sensation  into  a  mark 
or  sign  of  a  Permanent  Possibility  of  the  latter ;  from 
that  time  forward,  no  sooner  do  we  have  the  skin  sensa- 
tion which  we  call  a  sensation  of  contact,  than  we 
cognise,  or,  as  we  call  it,  perceive,  something  external, 


PRIMARY    QUALITIES    OF    MATTER.  273 

corresponding  to  the  idea  we  now  forrn  of  Matter  as  a 
resisting  object.  Oar  sensations  of  touch  have  become 
representative  of  the  sensations  of  resistance  with  which 
they  habitually  coexist :  just  as  philosophers  have  shown 
that  the  sensations  of  different  shades  of  colour  given 
by  our  sense  u)f  sight,  and  the  muscular  sensations 
accompanying  the  various  movements  of  the  eye,  become 
representative  of  those  sensations  of  touch  and  of  the 
muscles  of  locomotion,  which  are  the  only  real  meaning 
of  what  we  term  the  distance  of  a  body  from  us.* 

The  next  of  the  primary  qualities  of  Body  is  Exten- 
sion ;  which  has  long  been  considered  as  one  of  the 
principal  stumbling  blocks  of  the  Psychological  Theory. 
Eeid  and  Stewart  were  willing  to  let  the  whole  question 
of  the  intuitive  character  of  our  knowledge  of  Matter, 
depend  on  the  inability  of  psychologists  to  assign  any 
origin  to  the  idea  of  Extension,  or  analyse  it  into  any 
combination  of  sensations  and  reminiscences  of  sensation. 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  follows  their  example  in  laying  great 
stress  on  this  point. 

The  answer  of  the  opposite  school  I  will  present  in 
its  latest  and  most  improved  form,  as  given  by  Professor 
Bain,  in  the  First  Part  of  his  great  work  on  the 
Mind.t 

*  Sir  W.  Hamilton  draws  a  distinction  between  two  kinds  of  resis- 
tance, or  rather,  between  two  senses  of  tbe  word :  the  one,  that  which  I 
have  mentioned,  and  which  is  a  sensation  of  our  muscular  frame ;  the  other, 
the  property  of  Matter  which  the  old  writers  called  Impenetrability,  beiug 
that  by  which,  however  capable  of  being  compressed  into  a  smaller  space, 
it  refuses  to  part  with  all  its  extension,  and  be  extruded  from  space  alto- 
gether. But  these  two  kinds  of  resistance  are  merely  two  modes  of 
regarding  and  naming  the  same  state  of  consciousness  ;  for  if  the  body 
could  be  pressed  entirely  out  of  space,  the  only  way  in  which  we  should 
discover  that  it  had  vanished  would  be  by  the  sudden  cessation  of  all 
sensations  of  resistance.  It  is  always  the  muscular  sensation  which  con- 
stitutes the  presence,  and  its  negation  the  absence,  of  body,  in  any  given 
portion  of  space. 

t  "  The  Senses  and  the  Intellect,"  pp.  113-117.  My  first  extract  is 
from  the  original  edition ;  for  in  the  one  recently  published  (and  enriched 
by  many  valuable  improvements)  the  exposition  I  now  quote  is  given  more 
summarily,  and  iu  a  manner  otherwise  less  suited  for  my  purpose. 

[Dr.  M'Cosh,  without  any  warrant,  speaks  (p.  121)  of  Mr.  Bain  as 
having  "  elaborated  into  a  minute  system  the  general  statements  scattered 
throughout  Mr.  Mill's  Logic ;"  and  in  another  passage  (pp.  123,  124) 

T 


274  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF    THE 

Mr.  Bain  recognises  two  principal  kinds  or  modes 
of  discriminative  sensibility  in  the  muscular  sense  :  the 
one  corresponding:  to  the  degree  of  intensity  of  the 
muscular  effort — the  amount  of  energy  put  forth;  the 
other  corresponding  to  the  duration — the  longer  or 
shorter  continuance  of  the  same  effort.  The  first  makes 
us  acquainted  with  degrees  of  resistance  :  which  we  esti- 
mate by  the  intensity  of  the  muscular  energy  required 
to  overcome  it.  To  the  second  we  owe,  in  Mr.  Bain's 
opinion,  our  idea  of  Extension. 

"  When  a  muscle  begins  to  contract,  or  a  limb  to  bend, 
"  we  have  a  distinct  sense  of  how  far  the  contraction 
"  and  the  bending  are  carried ;  there  is  something  in  the 
"  special  sensibility  that  makes  one  mode  of  feeling  for 
"  half-contraction,  another  mode  for  three- fourths,  and 
"  another  for  total  contraction.  Our  feeling  of  moving 
"  organs,  or  of  contracting  muscles,  has  been  already 
*'  affirmed  to  be  different  from  our  feeling  of  dead  ten- 
"  sion — something  more  intense,  keen,  and  exciting ; 
"  and  I  am  now  led  to  assert,  from  ray  best  observations 

refers  to  tim  and  to  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  (Mr.  Herbert  Spencer!)  as 
merely  following  out  an  investigation  indicated  by  me.  Coleridge  re- 
minded one  of  his  critics,  that  there  are  such  things  in  the  world  as 
springs,  and  that  the  water  a  man  draws  does  not  necessarily  come  from 
a  hole  made  in  another  man's  cistern.  Mr.  Bain  did  not  stand  in  need  of 
any  predecessor  except  our  common  precursors,  and  has  taught  much 
more  to  me,  on  these  subjects,  than  there  is  any  reasonable  probability 
that  I  can  have  taught  to  him.  Dr.  M'Cosh  falls  into  a  corresponding 
mistake  concerning  myself,  when  he  ascribes  (pp.  7,  8)  my  regarding  it 
"  as  impossible  for  the  mind  to  rise  to  first  or  final  causes,  or  to  know  the 
"  nature  of  things,"  to  "  the  influence  "  of  M.  Comte.  The  larger  half  of 
my  "  System  of  Logic,"  including  all  its  fundamental  doctrines,  was 
written  before  I  had  ever  seen  the  "  Oours  de  Philosophie  Positive." 
That  work  was  indebted  to  M.  Comte  for  many  valuable  thoughts,  but  a 
short  list  would  exhaust  the  chapters,  and  even  the  pages,  which  contain 
them.  As  for  the  general  doctrine  which  Dr.  M'Cosh's  words  so  imper- 
fectly express — that  our  knowledge  is  only  of  the  coexistences  and 
sequences,  or  the  similitudes,  of  phaBuomena ;  I  was  familiar  with  it  before 
I  was  out  of  boyhood  from  the  teachings  of  my  father,  who  had  learnt 
it  where  M.  Comte  learnt  it — from  the  methods  of  physical  science,  and 
the  writings  of  their  philosophical  predecessors.  Ever  since  the  days  of 
Hume,  that  doctrine  has  been  the  general  property  of  the  philosophic 
world.  From  the  time  of  Brown  it  has  entered  even  into  popular 
philosophy.  I  have  given  a  brief  history  of  it  in  "  Auguste  Comte  and 
Positivism."] 


PRIMARY  QUALITIES    OF   MATTER.  275 

"  and  by  inference  from  acknowledged  facts,  that  the 
**  extent  of  range  of  a  movement,  the  degree  of  shorten- 
"  ing  of  a  muscle,  is  a  matter  of  discriminative  sensi- 
"  bility.  I  believe  it  to  be  much  less  pronounced,  less 
"  exact,  than  the  sense  of  resistaiice  above  described, 
"  but  to  be  not  the  less  real  and  demonstrable. 

"  If  we  suppose  a  weight  raised,  by  the  flexing  of  the 
"  arm,  first  four  inches,  and  then  eight  inches,  it  is 
*'  obvious  that  the  mere  amount  of  exertion  or  expended 
"  power  will  be  greater,  and  the  sensibility  increased  in 
"  proportion.  In  this  view,  the  sense  of  range  would 
"  simply  be  the  sense  of  a  greater  or  less  continuance  of 
"  the  same  effort,  that  effort  being  expended  in  move- 
*'  ment.  We  can  have  no  difficulty  in  believing  that 
"  there  should  be  a  discriminating  sensibility  in  this 
"  case  ;  it  seems  very  natural  that  we  should  be  diffe- 
"  rently  affected  by  an  action  continued  four  or  five  times 
**  longer  than  another.  If  this  be  admitted,  as  true  to 
"  observation,  and  as  inevitably  arising  from  the  exis- 
"  tence  of  any  discrimination  whatsoever  of  degrees  of 
"  expended  power,  everything  is  granted  that  is  con- 
"  tended  for  at  present.  It  is  not  meant  to  affirm  that 
"  at  each  degree  of  shortening  of  a  muscle,  or  each  inter- 
"  mediate  attitude  of  a  limb,  there  is  an  impression  made 
"  on  the  centres  that  can  be  distinguished  from  the  im- 
*'  pression  of  every  other  position  or  degree  of  shorten- 
"  ing ;  it  is  enough  to  require  that  the  range  or  amount 
"  of  movement  gone  over  should  be  a  matter  of  distinct 
"  perception,  through  the  sensibility  to  the  amount  of 
"  force  expended  in  time,  the  degree  of  effort  being  the 
"  same.  The  sensibility  now  in  question  differs  from 
"  the  former  (from  sensibility  to  the  intensity  of  effort) 
"  chiefly  in  making  the  degree  turn  upon  duration,  and 
"  not  upon  the  amount  expended  each  instant ;  and  it 
"  seems  to  me  impossible  to  deny  that  force  increased 
"  or  diminished  simply  as  regards  continuance,  is  as 
"  much  a  subject  of  discriminative  sensibility  as  force 
"increased  or  diminished  in  the  intensity  of  the  sus- 

*'  tained  effort 

t2 


276  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY   OF    THE 

"  If  the  sense  of  degrees  of  range  be  thus  admitted  as 
"  a  genuine  muscular  determination,  its  functions  in  out- 
"  ward  perception  are  very  important.  The  attributes  of 
**  extension  and  space  fall  under  its  scope.  In  the  first 
"  place,  it  gives  the  feeling  of  linear  extension,  inasmuch 
"  as  this  is  measured  by  the  sweep  of  a  limb,  or  other 
"  organ  moved  by  muscles.  The  difference  between  six 
"  inches  and  eighteen  inches  is  expressed  to  us  by  the 
"  different  degrees  of  contraction  of  some  one  group  of 
"  muscles;  those,  for  example,  that  flex  the  arm,  or,  in 
"  walking,  those  that  flex  or  extend  the  lower  limb. 
"  The  inward  impression  corresponding  to  the  outward 
"  fact  of  six  inches  in  length,  is  an  impression  arising 
"  from  the  continued  shortening  of  a  muscle,  a  true 
"  muscular  sensibility.  It  is  the  impression  of  a  mus- 
"  cular  effort  having  a  certain  continuance ;  a  greater 
"  length  produces  a  greater  continuance  (or  a  more  rapid 
"  movement)  and  in  consequence  an  increased  feeling  of 
"  expended  power. 

"  The  discrimination  of  length  in  any  one  direction 
"  includes  extension  in  any  direction.  Whether  it  be 
"  length,  breadth,  or  height,  the  perception  has  pre- 
"  cisely  the  same  character.  Hence  superficial  and  solid 
"  dimensions,  the  size  or  magnitude  of  a  solid  object, 
"  come  to  be  felt  in  a  similar  manner 

"  It  will  be  obvious  that  what  is  called  situation  or 
"  Locality  must  come  under  the  same  head,  as  these  are 
"  measured  by  distance  taken  along  with  direction ; 
"  direction  being  itself  estimated  by  distance,  both  in 
*'  common  observation  and  in  mathematical  theory.  In 
"  like  manner,  form  or  shape  h  ascertained  through  the 
"  same  primitive  sensibility  to  extension  or  range, 

"  By  the  muscular  sensibility  thus  associated  with 
"  prolonged  contraction  we  can  therefore  compare  dif- 
"  ferent  degrees  of  the  attribute  of  space,  in  other  words, 
"  diff'erence  of  length,  surface,  situation,  and  form.  When 
"  comparing  two  different  lengths  we  can  feel  which  is 
"  the  greater,  just  as  in  comparing  two  different  weights 
"  or  resistances.     We  can  also,  as  in  the  case  of  weight. 


PRIMARY  QUALITIES    OF   MATTER.  277 

"  acquire  some  absolute  standard  of  comparison,  through 
"  the  permanency  of  impressions  sufficiently  olten  re- 
"  peated.  We  can  entrain  the  leeling  of  contraction  of 
"  the  muscles  of  the  lower  limb  due  to  a  pace  of  thirty 
"  inches,  and  can  say  that  some  one  given  pace  is  less  or 
**  more  than  this  amount.  According  to  the  delicacy  of 
"  the  muscular  tissue  we  can,  by  shorter  or  longer 
"  practice,  acquire  distinct  impressions  for  every  standard 
"  dimension,  and  can  decide  at  once  whether  a  given 
"  length  is  four  inches  or  four  and  a  half,  nine  or  ten^ 
"  twenty  or  twenty-one.  This  sensibility  to  size,  en- 
"  abling  us  to  dispense  with  the  use  of  measures  of 
"  length,  is  an  acquirement  suited'^to  many  mechanical 
"  operations.  In  drawing,  painting,  and  engraving,  and 
"  in  the  plastic  arts,  the  engrained  discrimination  of  th^ 
"  most  delicate  differences  is  an  indispensable  qualiii- 
"  cation. 

"  The  third  attribute  of  muscular  discrimination  is 
"  the  velociiy  or  speed  of  the  movement.  It  is  difficult 
"  to  separate  this  from  the  foregoing.  In  the  feeling  of 
"  range,  velocity  answers  the  same  purpose  as  continuance; 
"  both  imply  an  enhancement  of  effort,  or  of  expended 
"  power,  different  in  its  nature  from  the  increase  of  dead 
"  effort  in  one  fixed  situation.  We  must  learn  to  feel 
"  that  a  slow  motion  for  a  long  time  is  the  same  as 
"  a  quicker  motion  with  less  duration;  which  we  can 
"  easily  do  by  seeing  that  they  both  produce  the  same 
"  effect  in  exhausting  tlie  full  range  of  a  limb.  If  we 
"  experiment  upon  the  different  ways  of  accomplishing 
"  a  total  sweep  of  the  arm,  we  shall  find  that  the  slow 
*•  movements  long  continued  are  equal  to  quick  motions 
"  of  short  continuance,  and  we  are  thus  able  by  either 
"  course  to  acquire  to  ourselves  a  measure  of  range  and 
"  lineal  extension 

"  We  would  thus  trace  the  perception  of  the  mathe      ] 
"  matical  and  mechanical  properties  of  matter  to  the    { 
"  muscular  sensibility  alone.      We  admit  that  this  per- 
"  ception  is  by  no  means  very  accurate  if  we  exclude  the 
"  special  senses,  but  we  are  bound  to  show  at  the  outset 


278       THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  THEORY  OF  THE 

"  that  these  senses  are  not  essential  to  the  perception,  as 
"  we  shall  afterwards  show  that  it  is  to  the  muscular 
"  apparatus  associated  with  the  senses  that  their  more 
'*  exalted  sensibility  must  be  also  ascribed.  The  space 
*•  moved  through  by  the  foot  in  pacing  may  be  appre- 
"  ciated  solely  through  the  muscles  of  the  limb,  as  well 
"  as  by  the  movements  of  the  touching  hand  or  the 
"  seeing  eye.  Whence  we  may  accede  to  the  assertion 
"  sometimes  made,  that  the  properties  of  space  might  be 
"  conceived,  or  ielt,  in  the  absence  of  an  external  world, 
"  or  of  any  other  matter  than  that  composing  the  body 
"  of  the  percipient  being;  for  the  body's  own  movements 
"  in  empty  space  would  suffice  to  make  the  very  same 
*'  impressions  on  the  mind  as  the  movements  excited  by 
"  outward  objects.  A  perception  of  length,  or  height,  or 
"  speed,  is  the  mental  impression,  or  state  of  conscious- 
"  ness,  accompanying  some  mode  of  muscular  movement, 
"  and  this  movement  may  be  generated  from  within  as 
"  well  as  from  without;  in  both  cases  the  state  of  con- 
"  sciousness  is  exactly  the  same." 

A  theory  of  Extension  somewhat  similar,  though  less 
cleirly  unfolded,  was  advanced  b)""  Brown,  and  as  it 
stands  in  his  statement,  fell  under  the  criticism  of  Sir 
W.  Hamilton;  who  gives  it,  as  he  thinks,  a  short  and 
crushing  refutation,  as  follows  :* — 

"  As  far  as  I  can  find  his  meaning  in  his  cloud  of  words, 
"  he  argues  thus : — The  notion  of  Time  or  succession 
"  being  supposed,  that  of  longitudinal  extension  is  given 
"  in  the  succession  of  feelings  which  accompanies  the 
"  gradual  contraction  of  a  muscle;  the  notion  of  this 
"  succession  constitutes,  ipso  facto,  the  notion  of  a  certain 
"  length;  and  the  notion  of  this  length  (he  quietly  takes 
"  for  granted)  is  the  notion  of  longitudinal  extension 
"  sought.  The  paralogism  here  is  transparent.  Length 
"  is  an  ambiguous  term;  and  it  is  length  in  space, 
"  extensive  length,  and  not  length  in  time,  protensive 
"  length,  whose  notion  it  is  the  problem  to  evolve.  To 
"  convert,  therefore,  the  notion  of  a   certain   kind  of 

*  Dissertations  on  Eeid,  p.  869. 


PRIMARY   QUALITIES   OF   MATTER.  279 

"  length  (and  that  certain  kind  being^  also  confessedly 
**  only  length  in  time)  into  the  notion  of  a  length  in 
*'  apace,  is  at  best  an  idle  begging  of  the  question — Is 
"  it  not  ?  Then  I  would  ask,  whether  the  series  of  feel- 
**  ings  of  which  we  are  aware  in  the  gradual  contraction 
"  of  a  muscle,  involves  the  consciousness  of  being  a  suc- 
"  cession  in  length,  (I)  in  time  alone?  or  (2)  in  space 
"  alone  ?  or  (8)  in  time  and  space  together  ?  These 
"  three  cases  will  be  allowed  to  be  exhaustive.  If  the 
"  first  be  affirmed;  if  the  succession  appear  in  conscious- 
"  ness  a  succession  in  time  exclusively,  then  nothing  has 
"  been  accomplished ;  for  the  notion  of  extension  or 
"  space  IS  in  no  way  contained  in  the  notion  of  duration 
"  or  time.  Again,  if  the  second  or  third  is  affirmed;  if 
"  the  series  appear  to  consciousness  a  succession  in 
"  length,  either  in  space  alone,  or  in  space  and  time 
"  together,  then  is  the  notion  it  behoved  to  generate 
"  employed  to  generate  itself." 

The  dilemma  looks  formidable,  but  one  of  its  horns 
is  blunt ;  for  the  very  assertion  of  Brown,  and  of  aU 
who  hold  the  Psychological  theory,  is  that  the  notion  of 
length  in  space,  not  being  in  our  consciousness  originally, 
is  constructed  by  the  mmd's  laws  out  of  the  notion  of 
length  in  time.  Their  argument  is  not,  as  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  fancied,  a  fallacious  confusion  between  two 
different  meanings  of  the  word  length ;  they  maintain 
the  one  to  be  a  product  of  the  other.  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
did  not  fully  understand  the  argument.  He  saw  that  a 
succession  of  feelings,  such  as  that  which  Brown  spoke 
of,  could  not  possibly  give  us  the  idea  of  simultaneous 
existence.  But  he  was  mistaken  in  supposing  that 
Brown's  argument  implied  this  absurdity.  The  notion 
of  simultaneity  must  be  supposed  to  have  been  already 
acquired ;  as  it  necessarily  would  be  at  the  very  earliest 
period,  from  the  familiar  fact  that  we  often  have 
sensations  simultaneously.  What  Brown  had  to  show 
was,  that  the  idea  of  the  particular  mode  of  simul- 
taneous existence  called  Extension,  might  arise,  not 
certainly  out  of  a  mere  succession  of  muscular  sensa- 


280  THE   PSTCHOLOGICAL   THEORY    OF    THE 

tions,  but  out  of  that  added  to  the  knowledge  already- 
possessed  that  sensations  of  touch  may  be  simultaneous. 
Suppose  two  small  bodies,  A  and  B,  sufficiently  near 
together  to  admit  of  their  being  touched  simultaneously, 
.  one  with  the  right  hand,  the  other  with  the  left.     Here  ^ 
are  two  tactual  sensations  which  are  simultaneous,  just 
as  a  sensation  of  colour  and  one  of  odour  might  be  ;  and 
this  makes  us  cognise  the  two  objects  of  touch  as  both 
existing  at  once.     The  question  then  is,  what  have  we 
in  our  minds  when  we  represent  to  ourselves  the  relation 
between  these  two  objects  already  known  to  be  simul- 
taneous, in  the  form  of  Extension,  or  intervening  Space 
— a  relation  which  we  do  not  suppose  to  exist  between 
the  colour  and  the  odour.     Now  those  who  agree  with 
Brown,  say  that  whatever  the  notion  of  Extension  may 
be,  we  acquire  it  by  passing  our  hand  or  some  other  organ 
of  touch  in  a  longitudinal  direction  from  A  to  B  :  that 
this  process,  as  far  as  we  are  conscious  of  it,  consists  of 
a  series  ot  varied  muscular  sensations,  differing  according 
to  the  amount  of  muscular-  effort,  and,  the  effort  being 
given,  differing  in  length    of  time.      When  we  say  that 
1     there  is  a  space  between  A  and  B,  we  mean  that  some 
amount  of  these  muscular   sensations   must   intervene ; 
and  when   we  say  that  the  space  is  greater  or  less,  we 
mean  that  the  series  of  sensations  (amount  of  muscular 
effort   being  given)    is  longer   or  shorter.     If    another 
object,  C,  is   farther  off  in  the  same  line,  we  judge  its 
distance  to  be  greater,  because  to  reach  it,  the  series  of 
muscular  sensations  must  be  further  prolonged,  or  else 
there   must  be  the  increase  of  effort  which  corresponds 
to  augmented  velocity.     Now  this,  which  is  not  denied 
to  be  the  mode  in  which  we  become  aware  of  extension, 
by  any  other  sense   tlian    sight,  is  considered    by   the 
psychologists  in  question  to  be  extension.     The  idea  of 
Extended  Body  they  consider  to  be  that  of  a  variety  of 
resisting  points,  existing  simultaneously,  but  which  can 
be  perceived  by  the  same  tactile  organ  only  successively, 
at  the  end  of  a  series  of  muscular  vsensations  which  con- 
stitutes their  distance  ;  and  are  said  to  be  at  different  diss- 


PRIMARY   QUALITIES    OF    MATTER.  2S1 

tances  from  one  another  because  the  series  of  intervening 
muscular  sensations  is  lonr!;er  in  some  casesthan  in  others.* 
The  theory  may  be  recapitulated  as  follows.  The 
sensation  of  muscular  motion  unimpeded  constitutes  our 
notion  of  empty  space,  and  the  sensation  of  muscular 
motion  impeded  constitutes  that  of  filled  space.  Space 
in  Room — room  for  movement ;  which  its  German  name, 
Ramn,  distinctly  confirms.  We  have  a  sensation  which 
accompanies  the  free  movement  of  our  organs,  say  i'or 
instance  of  our  arm.  This  sensation  is  variously  modified 
by  the  direction,  and  by  the  amount  of  the  movement. 
We  have  different  states  of  muscular  sensation  correspond- 
ing to  the  movements  of  the  arm  upward,  downward,  to 
right,  to  left,  or  in  any  radius  whatever  of  a  sphere  of 
which  the  joint,  that  the  arm  revolves  round,  forms  the 
centre.  We  have  also  different  states  of  muscular  sen- 
sation according  as  the  arm  is  moved  more ;  whether  this 
consists  in  its  being  moved  with  greater  velocit),  or  with 
the  same  velocity  during  a  longer  time  :  and  the  equiva- 
lence of  these  two  is  speedily  learnt,  by  finding  that  a 
greater  effort  conducts  the  hand  in  a  shorter  time  from 

*  It  is  not  pretended  that  all  this  was  clearly  seen  by  Brown.  It  is 
impossible  to  defend  the  theory  as  Brown  stated  it.  He  seems  to  have 
thought  that  the  essence  of  extension  consisted  in  divisibility  into  parts. 
"  A  succession  of  feelings  "  (he  says)  "  when  remembered  by  the  mind 
"  which  looks  back  upon  them,  was  found  to  involve,  necessarily,  the 
"notion  of  divisibility  into  separate paHs,  and  therefore  of  length,  ivhick 
"  is  only  another  name  for  continued  divisibility."  (Lecture  xxiv.  vol.  ii. 
p.  3  of  the  19th  edition,  1851.)  He  thought  that  he  had  explained  all 
that  needed  explanation  in  the  idea  of  space,  when  he  had  shown  how  the 
notion  of  contmued  divisibility  got  into  it.  This  appears  when  he  says, 
"  It  would  not  be  easy  fur  any  one  to  define  matter  more  simply,  than  as 
"  that  which  has  parts,  and  that  which  resists  our  efforts  to  grasp  it ; 
"  and  in  our  analysis  of  the  feelings  of  infancy,  we  have  beeu  able  to  dia- 
"  cover  how  both  these  notions  may  have  arisen  in  the  mind."  But  if 
divisibility  into  parts  constitutes  all  our  notion  of  extension,  every  sensa- 
tion we  have  must  be  identified  with  extension,  for  they  are  all  divisible 
into  parts  (parts  in  succession,  which  Brown  thinks  suliicient)  when  they 
are  prolonged  beyond  the  shortest  instant  of  duration  which  our  con- 
sciousness recognises.  It  is  probable  that  Brown  did  not  mean  this,  but 
thought  that  all  he  had  to  account  for  in  the  conception  of  space,  was  its 
divisibility,  because  he  tacitly  assumed  that  all  the  rest  of  the  notion  was 
already  given  in  the  fact  of  muscular  movement.  And  this,  properly 
understood,  is  maintainable ;  but  Brown  cannot  here  be  acquitted  of  a 
charge  to  which  he  is  often  liable,  that  of  leaving  an  important  philo- 
sophical question  only  half  thought  out. 


282  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF  THE 

the  same  point  to  the  same  point;  from  the  tactual 
impression  A  to  the  tactual  impression  B.  These  dif- 
ferent kinds  and  qualities  of  muscular  sensation,  expe- 
rienced in  getting  from  one  point  to  another  (that  is, 
obtaining  in  succession  two  sensations  of  touch  and 
resistance,  the  objects  of  which  are  regarded  as  simul- 
taneous) are  all  we  mean  by  saying  that  the  points  are 
separated  by  spaces,  that  they  are  at  different  distances, 
and  in  different  directions.  An  intervening  series  of 
muscular  sensations  before  the  one  object  can  be  reached 
from  the  other,  is  the  only  peculiarity  which  (according 
to  this  theory)  distinguishes  simultaneity  in  space,  from 
the  simultaneity  which  may  exist  between  a  taste  and  a 
colour,  or  a  taste  and  a  smell :  and  we  have  no  reason 
for  believing  that  Space  or  Extension  in  itself,  is  any- 
thing different  from  that  which  we  recognise  it  by.  It 
appears  to  me  that  this  doctrine  is  sound,  and  that  the 
muscular  sensations  in  question  are  the  sources  of  all  the 
notion  of  Extension  which  we  should  ever  obtain  from 
the  tactual  and  muscular  senses  without  the  assistance 
of  the  eye. 

But  the  participation  of  the  eye  in  generating  our 
actual  notion  of  Extension,  very  much  alters  its  charac- 
ter, and  is,  I  think,  the  main  cause  of  the  difficulty 
felt  in  believing  that  Extension  derives  its  meaning  to 
us  from  a  phajnomenon  which  is  not  synchronous  but 
successive.  The  fact  is,  that  the  conception  we  now 
have  of  Extension  or  Space  is  an  eye  picture,  and 
comprehends  a  great  number  of  parts  of  Extension  at 
once,  or  in  a  succession  so  rapid  that  our  consciousness 
confounds  it  with  simultaneity.  How,  then  (it  is  natu- 
rally asked)  can  this  vast  collection  of  consciousnesses 
which  are  sensibly  simultaneous,  be  generated  by  the 
mind  out  of  its  consciousness  of  a  succession — the  suc- 
cession of  muscular  feelings?  An  experiment  may  be 
conceived,  which  would  throw  great  light  on  this  sub- 
ject, but  which  unfortunately  is  more  easily  imagined 
than  obtained.  There  have  been  persons  born  blind  who 
were  mathematicians,  and  I  believe  even  naturalists  ;  and 


PRIMARY    QUALITIES   OF   MATTER.  283 

it  is  not  impossible  that  one  day  a  person  born  blind 
may  be  a  metaphysician.  The  first  who  is  so,  will  be 
able  to  enlighten  us  on  this  point.  For  he  will  be  an 
experimentura  crucis  on  the  mode  in  which  extension  is 
conceived  and  known,  independently  of*  the  eye.  Not 
having  the  assistance  of"  that  organ,  a  person  blind  from 
birth  must  necessarily  perceive  the  parts  of  extension — 
the  parts  of  a  line,  of  a  surface,  or  of  a  solid — in  con- 
scious succession.  He  perceives  them  by  passing  his 
hand  along  them,  if  small,  or  by  walking  over  them  if 
great.  The  parts  of  extension  which  it  is  possible  for 
him  to  perceive  simultaneously,  are  only  very  small  parts, 
almost  the  minima  of  extension.  Hence,  if  the  Psycho- 
logical theory  of  the  idea  of  extension  is  true,  the  blind 
metaphysician  would  feel  very  little  of  the  difficulty  which 
seeing  metaphysicians  feel,  in  admitting  that  the  idea 
of  Space  is,  at  bottom,  one  of  time — and  that  the  notion 
of  extension  or  distance,  is  that  of  a  motion  of  the  mus- 
cles continued  for  a  longer  or  a  shorter  duration.  Jf  this 
analysis  of  extension  appeared  as  paradoxical  to  the 
metaphysician  born  blind,  as  it  does  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
this  would  be  a  strong  argument  against  the  Psycholo- 
gical theory.  But  if,  on  the  contrary,  it  did  not  at  all 
startle  him,  that  theory  would  be  very  strikingly  cor- 
roborated. 

We  have  no  experiment  directly  in  point.  But  we 
have  one  which  is  the  very  next  thing  to  it.  We  have 
not  the  perceptions  and  feelings  of  a  metaphysician  blind 
from  birth,  told  and  interpreted  by  himself.  But  we  have 
those  of  ail  ordinary  person  blind  from  birth,  told  and 
interpreted  for  him  by  a  metaphysician.  And  the  English 
reader  is  indebted  for  them  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton.  Platner, 
"  a  man  no  less  celebrated  as  an  acute  philosopher  than 
"  as  a  learned  physician  and  an  elegant  scholar,"  endea- 
voured to  ascertain  by  observation  what  notion  of  ex- 
tension was  possessed  by  a  person  born  blind,  and  made 
known  the  result  in  words  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has 
rendered  into  his  clear  English."^"  "  In  regard  to  the 
*  Lectures,  ii.  174. 


284  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF   THE 

"  visionless  representation  of  space  or  extension,  the 
"  attentive  observation  of  a  person  born  blind,  which  I 
"  formerly  instituted  in  the  year  1785,  and  again,  in 
"  relation  to  the  point  in  question,  have  continued  for 
"  three  whole  weeks — this  observation,  I  say,  has  con- 
"  vinced  me,  that  the  sense  of  touch,  by  itself,  is  alto- 
"gether  incompetent  to  afford  us  the  representation  of 
*'  extension  and  space,  and  is  not  even  cognisant  of  local 
"  exteriority ;  in  a  word,  that  a  man  deprived  of  sight 
"  has  absolutely  no  perception  of  an  outer  world,  beyond 
**  the  existence  of  something  effective,  different  from  his 
"  own  feeling  of  passivity,  and  in  general  only  of  the 
"  numerical  diversity — shall  I  say  of  impressions,  or  of 
"  things  ?  In  fact,  to  those  born  blind,  time  serves  instead 
"  of  space.  Vicinity  and  distance  means  in  their  mouths 
;"  nothing  more  than  the  shorter  or  longer  time,  the 
i"  smaller  or  greater  number  of  feelings,  which  they  find 
"  necessary  to  attain  from  some  one  feeling  to  another. 
"  That  a  person  blind  from  birth  employs  the  language 
"  of  vision — that  may  occasion  considerable  error;  and  did, 
"  indeed,  at  the  commencement  of  my  observations,  lead 
"  me  wrong ;  but,  in  point  of  fact,  he  knows  notliing  of 
"  things  as  existing  out  of  each  other ;  and  (this  in  par- 
"  ticular  I  have  very  clearly  remarked)  if  objects,  and  the 
"  parts  of  his  body  touched  by  them,  did  not  make 
"  different  hnds  of  impression  on  his  nerves  of  sensation, 
*'  he  would  take  everything  external  for  one  and  the 
*'  same.  In  his  own  body,  he  absolutely  did  not  dis- 
"  criminate  head  and  foot  at  all  by  their  distance,  but 
"  merely  by  the  difference  of  the  feelings  (and  his  per- 
"  ception  of  such  differences  was  incredibly  fine)  which  he 
*'  experienced  from  the  one  and  from  the  other,  and 
"  moreover  through  time.  In  like  manner,  in  external 
"  bodies,  he  distinguished  their  figure,  merely  by  the 
"  varieties  of  impressed  feelings  ;  inasmuch,  for  example, 
"  as  the  cube,  by  its  angles,  affected  his  feeling  differently 
*'  from  the  sphere." 

The  highly  instructive  representation  here  given  by 
Platner,  of  this  person's  state  of  mind,  is   exactly  that 


PRIMARY  QUAIJTIES   OF    MATTER.  285 

which  we  have  just  read  in  Mr.  Bain,  and  which  that 
philosopher  holds  to  be  the  primitive  conception  of  ex- 
tension by  all  of  us,  before  the  wonderful  power  of  sight 
and  its  associations  in  abridging  the  mental  processes, 
has  come  into  play.  The  conclusion  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  Platner  draws  from  the  case,  is  that  we  obtain  the 
idea  of  extension  solely  from  sight ;  and  even  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  is  staggered  in  his  belief  of  the  contrary.  But 
Platner,  though  unintentionally,  puts  a  false  colour  on 
the  matter  when  he  says  that  his  patient  had  no  per- 
ception of  extension.  He  used  the  terms  expressive  of 
it  with  such  propriety  and  discrimination,  that  Platner, 
by  his  own  account,  did  not  at  first  suspect  him  of  not 
meaning  by  those  terms  all  that  is  meant  by  persons 
who  can  see.  He  therefore  meant  something;  he  had 
impressions  which  the  words  expressed  to  his  mind ;  he 
had  conceptions  of  extension,  after  his  own  manner. 
But  his  idea  of  degrees  of  extension  was  but  the  idea  of 
a  greater  or  smaller  number  of  sensations  experienced  in 
succession  "  to  attain  from  some  one  feeling  to  another ;" 
that  is,  it  was  exactly  what,  according  to  Brown's  and 
Mr.  Bain's  theory,  it  ought  to  have  been.  And,  the 
sense  of  touch  and  of  the  muscles  not  being  aided  by 
sight,  the  sensations  continued  to  be  conceived  by  him 
only  as  successive;  his  mental  representation  of  them 
remained  a  conception  of  a  series,  not  of  a  coexistent 
group.  Though  he  must  have  had  experience  of  simul- 
taneity, for  no  being  who  has  a  pluraHty  of  senses  can  be 
without  it,  he  does  not  seem  to  have  thoroughly  realized 
the  conception  of  the  parts  of  space  as  simultaneous. 
Since  what  was  thus  wanting  to  him,  is  the  principal 
feature  of  the  conception  as  it  is  in  us,  he  seemed  to 
Platner  to  have  no  notion  of  extension.  But  Platner, 
fortunately,  being  a  man  who  could  both  observe,  and 
express  his  observations  precisely,  has  been  able  to  con- 
vey to  our  minds  the  conception  which  his  patient  really 
had  of  extension  ;  and  we  find  that  it  was  the  same  as  our 
own,  with  the  exception  of  the  element  which,  if  the 
Psychological  theory  be  true,  was  certain  to  be  added 


286  THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL   THEORY    OF    THE 

to  it  by  the  sense  of  sight.  For,  when  this  sense  is 
awakened,  and  its  sensations  of  colour  have  become 
representative  of  the  tactual  and  muscular  sensations 
with  which  they  are  coexistent,  the  fact  that  we  can 
receive  a  vast  number  of  sensations  of  colour  at  the 
same  instant  (or  what  appears  such  to  our  consciousness) 
puts  us  in  the  same  position  as  if  we  had  been  able  to 
receive  that  number  of  tactual  and  muscular  sensations 
in  a  single  instant.  The  ideas  of  all  the  successive 
tactual  and  muscular  feelings  which  accompany  the 
passage  of  the  hand  over  the  whole  of  the  coloured 
surface,  are  made  to  flash  on  the  mind  at  once  :  and 
impressions  which  were  successive  in  sensation  become 
coexistent  in  thought.  From  that  time  we  do  with 
perfect  facility,  and  are  even  compelled  to  do,  what 
Platner's  patient  never  completely  succeeded  in  doing, 
namely,  to  think  all  the  parts  of  extension  as  coexisting, 
and  to  believe  that  we  perceive  them  as  such.  And  if 
the  laws  of  inseparable  association,  which  are  already 
admitted  as  the  basis  of  other  acquired  perceptions  of 
sight,  are  considered  in  their  application  to  this  case,  it 
is  certain  that  this  apparent  perception  of  successive 
elements  as  simultaneous  would  be  generated  and  would 
supply  all  that  there  is  in  our  idea  of  extension,  more 
than  there  was  in  that  of  Platner's  patient.* 

*  Mr.  Mahaffy  thinks  (pp.  xx.,  xxi.)  tliat  Plainer  omitted  to  ascertain 
wiiether  his  patient  was  capable  of  recognising  simultaneity ;  and  is  of 
opinion  that  he  could  not  do  so,  or  that  if  he  could,  it  must  have  been 
owing  to  his  education  among  people  possessed  of  sight.  "  The  question 
"  remains:  can  we  postulate  a  sense  of  such  simultaneity  originally,  be- 
"  fore  any  space  or  extension  is  given  ?  I  am  disposed  to  agree  with 
"  Brown,  that,  although  we  can  afterwards  analyse  them,  all  simultaneous 
"  feelings  form  originally  one  mental  state ;  which  of  course  excludes 
"  simultaneity  until  the  analysis  obtained  by  the  aid  of  space  and  exten- 
"  sion  give  us  the  elements  separately.  Hence,  until  at  least  one  body 
*'  was  given  as  extended,  we  should  not  obtain  the  notion."  Brown  may 
very  possibly  be  right,  but  it  does  not  follow  that  the  analysis  necessary 
to  our  distinguishing  different  sensations  in  one  mass  of  simultaneous 
feeling,  can  only  take  place  by  means  of  space  and  extension.  If  the 
simultaneous  sensations  differ  in  kind,  as  a  sound,  for  instance,  and  a 
smell,  all  that  is  necessary  to  our  being  able  to  distinguish  them  when 
together  is  that  we  should  at  some  other  time  have  experienced  them 
separate.  We  should  then  know  the  compound,  and  also  the  elements  : 
and  since  these  are  not  chemically  fused  into  a  product  bearing  no  resem- 


primary'  qualities  op  matter.  287 

I  sliall  quote,  in  continuation,  part  of  the  exposition 
by  Mr.  Bain,  of  the  machinery  by  which  our  consci- 
ousness of  Extension  becomes  an  appendage  of  our 
sensations  of  Sight.  It  is  a  striking  example  of  the 
commanding  influence  of  that  sense ;  which,  though  it 
has  no  greater  variety  of  original  impressions  than  our 
other  special  senses,  yet  owing  to  the  two  properties,  of 
being  able  to  receive  a  great  number  of  its  impressions 
at  once,  and  to  receive  them  from  all  distances,  takes 
the  lead  altogether  from  the  sense  of  touch:  and  is  not 
only  the  organ  b}''  which  we  read  countless  possibilities 
of  tactual  and  muscular  sensations  which  can  never,  to 
us,  become  realities,  but  substitutes  itself  for  our  touch 
and  our  muscles  even  where  we  can  use  them — causes 
their  actual  use  as  avenues  to  knowledge,  to  become,  in 
many  cases,  obsolete, — the  sensations  themselves  to  be 
little  heeded  and  very  indistinctly  remembered, — and 
communicates  its  own  prerogative  of  simultaneousness  to 
impressions  and  conceptions  originating  in  other  senses, 
which  it  could  never  have  given,  but  only  suggests, 
throu<jh  visible  marks  associated  with  them  by  experience. 

"  The  distinctive  impressibility  of  the  eye,"  says  Mr. 
Bain,*  "  is  for  Colour.     This  is  the  effect  specific  to  it 

blance  to  its  factors,  bat  retain  when  combined  their  identity  with  what 
they  are  in  their  separate  state,  our  knowledge  of  them  separately  would 
enable  us  to  recognise  them  in  the  compound ;  in  other  words,  to  feel  two 
sensations  as  simultaneous. 

Dr.  M'Cosh  says  (p.  143)  that  the  experience  of  other  observers  (and 
particularly  Mr.  Kinghan,  Principal  of  the  Institut'on  for  the  Blind  at 
Belfast)  as  well  as  experiments  by  Dr.  M'Cosh  himself  on  young  children 
born  blind,  do  not  confirm  Platner's  statement,  but  prove  that  those  bom 
blind  have  "  a  very  clear  notion  of  figure  and  distance,  got  directly  from 
the  sense  of  touch."  This  is  just  what  might  have  been  expected,  for  I 
am  far  from  agreeing  with  Platner  that  the  notions  of  figure  and  distance 
come  originally  from  sight.  The  sense  of  sight  is  not  necessary  to  give 
the  perception  of  simultaneity ;  but,  giving  a  prodigious  number  of  simul- 
taneous sensations  in  one  glance,  it  greatly  quickens  all  processes  depen- 
dent on  observation  of  the  fact  of  simultaneousness.  A  person  born  bUnd 
can  acquire,  by  a  more  gradual  process,  all  that  there  is  in  our  notion  of 
Space  except  the  visible  Picture :  but  he  will  be  much  longer  before  he 
realizes  it  completely,  and  in  the  case  of  Platner's  patient  that  point  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  reached. 

*  The  Senses  and  the  Intellect,  pp.  370-374. 1  now  quote  from  the  second 
edition  (1864).  The  corresponding  passage  in  thefirst  edition  begins  at  p. 363. 


288       THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  THEORY  OF  THE 

"  as  a  sense.  But  the  feeling  of  Colour  by  itself,  im- 
"  plies  no  knowledge  of  any, outward  object,  as  a  cause 
"  or  a  thing  wherein  the  colour  inheres.  It  is  simply  a 
"  mental  effect  or  influence,  a  feeling  or  conscious  state, 
"  which  we  should  be  able  to  distinguisli  from  other  con- 
"  scions  states,  as  for  example,  a  smell  or  a  sound.  We 
"  should  also  be  able  to  mark  the  difference  between  it 
"  and  others  of  the  same  kind,  more  or  less  vivid,  more 
"  or  less  enduring,  more  or  less  voluminous.  So  we 
"  should  distinguish  the  qualitative  differences  between 
"  one  colour  and  another.  Pleasure  or  pain,  with  dis- 
'■  crimination  of  intensity  and  of  duration,  would  attach 
"  to  the  mere  sensation  of  colour.  Knowledge  or  belief 
"  in  an  external  or  material  coloured  body,  there  would 
"  be  none. 

"  But  when  we  add  the  active  or  muscular  sensibility 
"  of  the  eye,  we  obtain  pew  products.  The  sweep  of  the 
"  eye  over  the  coloured  field  gives  a  feeling  of  a  definite 
"  amount  of  action,  an  exercise  of  internal  power,  which 
"  is  something  totally  different  from  the  passive  feeling 
"  of  light.  This  action  has  many  various  modes,  all  of 
"  the  same  quality,  but  all  distinctively  felt  and  recog- 
"  nised  by  us.  Thus  the  movements  may  be  in  any 
"  direction — horizontal,  vertical,  or  slanting ;  and  every 
"  one  of  these  movements  is  felt  as  different  from  every 
"  other.  In  addition  to  these,  we  have  the  movements 
"  of  adjustment  of  the  eye,  brought  on  by  differences  in 
*'  the  remoteness  of  objects.  We  have  distinctive  feelings 
"  belonging  to  these  different  adjustments,  just  as  we 
"  have  towards  the  different  movements  across  the  field 
"  of  view.  If  the  eyes  are  adjusted,  first  to  clear  vision 
"  for  an  object  six  inches  from  the  eye,  and  afterwards 
"  change  their  adjustment  to  suit  an  object  six  feet  dis- 
"  tant,  we  are  distinctly  conscious  of  the  change,  and  of 
*'  the  degree  or  amount  of  it ;  we  know  that  the  change  is 
*'  greater  than  in  extending  the  adjustment  to  a  three-feet 
"  object,  while  it  is  less  than  we  should  have  to  go 
**  through  for  a  twenty-feet  object.  Thus  in  the  altera- 
"  tions  of  the  eyes  for  near  and  far,  we  have  a  distinctive 


PRIMARY    QUALITIES   OF    MATTER,  289 

"  consciousness  of  amount  or  degree,  no  less  than  in  the 
"  movements  for  right  and  left,  up  and  down.  Feelings 
**  with  the  character  of  activity  are  thus  incorporated 
"  with  the  sensibility  to  colour  ;  the  luminous  impression 
"  is  associated  with  exertion  on  our  part,  and  is  no 
"  longer  a  purely  passive  state.  We  find  that  the  light 
"  changes  as  our  activity  changes,  we  recognise  in  it  a 
"  certain  connexion  with  our  movements  ;  an  association 
"  springs  up  between  the  passive  feeling  and  the  active 
"  energy  of  the  visible  ["  visual  "]  organ,  or  rather  of  the 
"  body  generally ;  for  the  changes  of  view  are  owing  to 
"  movements  of  the  head  and  trunk,  as  well  as  to  the 
**  sweep  of  the  eye  within  its  own  orbit.  .... 

"  When,  along  with  a  fo^^ward  movement,  we  behold 
"  a  steadily  varying  change  of  appearance  in  the  objects 
"  before  us,  we  associate  the  change  with  the  locomotive 
"  effort,  and  after  many  repetitions,  we  firmly  connect 
"  the  one  with  the  other.  We  then  know  what  is  im- 
"  plied  in  a  certain  feeling  in  the  eye,  a  certain  adjust- 
"  ment  of  the  lenses  and  a  certain  inclination  of  the 
"  axes,  of  all  of  which  we  are  conscious  ;  we  know  that 
"  these  things  are  connected  with  the  further  experience 
"  of  a  definite  locomotive  energy  needing  to  be  expended, 
"  in  order  to  alter  this  consciousness  to  some  other  con- 
"  sciousness.  Apart  from  this  association,  the  eye-feel- 
"  ing  might  be  recognised  as  differing  from  other  eye- 
"  feelings,  but  there  could  be  no  other  perception  in  the 
*'  case.  Experience  connects  these  differences  of  ocular 
"  adjustment  with  the  various  exertions  of  the  body  at 
"  large,  and  the  one  can  then  imply  and  reveal  the 
'*  others.  The  feeling  that  we  have  when  the  eyes  are 
"  parallel  and  vision  distinct,  is  associated  with  a  great 
"  and  prolonged  effort  of  walking,  in  other  words,  with 
"  a  long  distance.  An  inclination  of  the  eyes  of  two 
"  degrees,  is  associated  with  two  paces  to  bring  us  up  to 
"  the  nearest  limit  of  vision,  or  with  a  stretch  of  some 
"  other  kind,  measured  in  the  last  resort  by  pacing,  or 
"  by  passing  the  hand  along  the  object.  The  change 
"  from  an  inclination  of  30°  to  an  inclination  of  10°,  is 

V 


290  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY  OF   THE 

"  associated  with  a  given  sweep  of  the  arm,  carrying  the 
"  hand  forward  over  eight  inches  and  a  half" 

These  slight  changes  in  the  action  of  the    muscles 
that  move  the  eye,  habitually  effected  in  a  time  too  short 
for  computation,   are  the  means  by  which    our   visual 
impressions    from   the    whole    of  that   portion    of  the 
universe  which  is  visible  from  the  position  where  we 
stand,  may  be  concentrated  within  an  interval  of  time 
so  small  that  we  are  scarcely  conscious  of  any  interval ; 
and  they  are,  in  my  apprehension,  the  generating  cause 
of  all  that  we  have  in  our  notion  of  extension  over  and 
above  what  Platner's  patient  had  in  his.     He  had  to 
conceive   two   or  any   number   of  bodies    (or  resisting 
objects)   with  a  long  train    of  sensations   of  muscular 
contraction     filling    up    the    interval    between    them : 
while   we,  on  the  contrary,  think  of  them  as  rushing 
upon   our   sight,   many   of  them    at  the    same   instant, 
all  of  them  at  what  is  scarcely  distinguishable  from  the 
same  instant ;  and  this  visual  imagery  effaces  from  our 
minds  any  distinct  consciousness  of  the  series  of  muscu- 
lar sensations  of  which  it  has   become    representative. 
The  simultaneous  visual  sensations  are  to  us  symbols  of 
tactual  and  muscular  ones  which  were  slowly  successive. 
"  This  symbolic  relation  being  far  briefer,  is  habitually 
"  thought  of  in  place  of  that  it  symbolizes  :  and  by  the 
"  continued  use  of  such  symbols,  and  the  union  of  them 
"  into  more  complex  ones,  are  generated  our  ideas  of 
"  visible    extension — ideas    which,    like   those    of  the 
''  algebraist  working  out  an  equation,  are  wholly  unlike 
*'  the  ideas  symbolized ;  and  which  yet,  like  his,  occupy 
*'  the  mind  to  the  entire  exclusion   of  the  ideas  sym- 
**  bolized."     This   last    extract   is   from    Mr.    Herbert 
Spencer,*  whose  Principles  of  Psychology,  in  spite  of 
some  doctrines  which  he    holds    in    common   with  the 
intuitive  school,  are   on  the   whole    one  of  the    finest 
examples  we  possess  of  the  Psychological  Method  in  its 
full  power.     His  treatment  of  this    subject,   and    Mr. 
Bain's,  are  at  once  corroborative  and  supplementary  of 

*  Principles  of  Psychology,  p.  224.  , 


PRIMARY    QUALITIES    OF    MATTER.  291 

one  another :  and  to  them  I  must  refer  the  reader  who 
desires  an  ampler  elucidation  of  the  general  question. 
The  remainder  of  this  chapter  will  be  devoted  to  the 
examination  of  some  peculiarities  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
treatment  of  it. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  relies  mainly  upon  one  argument  to 
prove  that  Vision,  without  the  aid  of  Touch,  gives  an 
immediate  knowledge  of  Extension :  which  argument 
had  been  anticipated  in  a  passage  which  he  quotes  from 
D'Alembert.*  The  following  is  his  own  statement  of 
it.  "  It  canf  easily  be  shown  that  the  perception  of 
"  colour  involves  the  perception  of  extension.  It  is 
"  admitted  that  we  have  by  sight  a  perception  of  colours, 
"  consequently  a  perception  of  the  difference  of  colours. 
"  But  a  perception  of  the  distinction  of  colours  neces- 
"  sarily  involves  the  perception  of  a  discriminating  line  ; 
"  for  if  one  colour  be  laid  beside  or  upon  another,  we 
"  only  distinguish  them  as  different  by  perceiving  that 
"  they  limit  each  other,  which  limitation  necessarily 
*'  affords  a  breadthless  line, — a  line  of  demarcation. 
"  One  colour  laid  upon  another,  in  fact,  gives  a  line 
"  returning  upon  itself,  that  is,  a  figure.  But  a  line  and 
"  a  figure  are  modifications  of  extension.  The  percep- 
"  tion  of  extension,  therefore,  is  necessarily  given  in  the 
"  perception  of  colours." 

And  farther  on:| — "All  parties  are,  of  course,  at  one 
*'  in  regard  to  the  fact  that  we  see  colour.  Those  who 
"  hold  that  we  see  extension,  admit  that  we  see  it  only 
"  as  coloured ;  and  those  who  deny  us  any  vision  of 
"  extension,  make  colour  the  exclusive  object  of  sight. 
"  In  regard  to  this  first  position,  all  are,  therefore,  agreed. 
"  Nor  are  they  less  harmonious  in  reference  to  the 
"  second  ; — that  the  power  of  conceiving  colour  involves 
"  the  power  of  perceiving  the  differences  of  colours.  By 
"  sight  we,  therefore,  perceive  colour,  and  discriminate 
"  one  colour,  that  is,  one  coloured  body, — one  sensation 
"  of  colour,  from  another.     This  is  admitted.     A  third 

*  Lectures,  ii.  172.  f  Ibid.  p.  165. 

X  Ibid.  p.  167. 
D    2 


292  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL   THEORY    OF    THE 

"  position  will  also  be  denied  by  none,  that  the  colours 
"  discriminated  in  vision,  are,  or  may  be,  placed  side  by 
"  side  in  immediate  juxtaposition  ;  or,  one  may  limit 
**  another  by  being  superinduced  partially  over  it.  A 
"  fourth  position  is  equally  indisputable  ;  that  the  con- 
"  trasted  colours,  thus  bounding  each  other,  will  form  by 
"  their  meeting  a  visible  line,  and  that,  if  the  superin- 
"  duced  colour  be  surrounded  by  the  other,  this  line  will 
"  return  upon  itself,  and  thus  constitute  the  outline  of 
"  a  visible  figure.  These  four  positions  command  a 
"  peremptory  assent ;  they  are  all  self-evident.  But 
"  their  admission  at  once  explodes  the  paradox  under 
"  discussion" — (that  extension  cannot  be  cognised  by 
sight  alone).  "  And  thus :  A  line  is  extension  in  one 
"  dimension, — length;  a  figure  is  extension  in  two, — 
"  length  and  breadth.  Therefore,  the  vision  of  a  line  is 
"  a  vision  of  extension  in  length ;  the  vision  of  a  figure, 
"  the  vision  of  extension  in  length  and  breadth." 

I  must  acknowledge  that  I  cannot  make  the  answer 
to  this  argument  as  thorough  and  conclusive  as  I  could 
wish ;  for  we  have  not  the  power  of  making  an  experi- 
ment, the  completing  converse  of  Platner's.  There  is 
no  example  of  a  person  born  with  the  sense  of  sight,  but 
without  those  of  touch  and  the  muscles:  and  nothing 
less  than  this  would  enable  us  to  define  precisely  the 
extent  and  limits  of  the  conceptions  which  sight  is  capable 
of  giving,  independently  of  association  with  impressions 
of  another  sense.  There  are,  however,  considerations 
well  adapted  to  moderate  the  extreme  confidence  which 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  places  in  this  argument.  First,  it 
must  be  observed  that  when  the  eye,  at  present,  takes 
cognizance  of  a  visible  figure,  it  does  not  cognise  it  by 
means  of  colour  alone,  but  by  all  those  motions  and 
modifications  of  the  muscles  connected  with  the  eye, 
which  have  so  great  a  share  in  giving  us  our  acquired 
perceptions  of  sight.  To  determine  what  can  be  cog- 
nised by  sight  alone,  we  must  suppose  an  eye  incapable 
of  these  changes ;  which  can  neither  have  the  curvature 
of  its  lenses  modified  nor  the  direction  of  its  axis  changed 


PRIMARY    QUALITIES   OF    MATTER.  293 

by  any  mode  of  muscular  action  ;  which  cannot,  therefore, 
travel  along  the  boundary  line  that  separates  two  colours, 
but  must  remain  fixed  with  a  steady  gaze  on  a  definite 
spot.  If  we  once  allow  the  eye  to  follow  the  direction 
of  a  line  or  the  periphery  of  a  figure,  we  have  no  longer 
merely  sight,  bat  important  muscular  sensations  super- 
added. Now  there  is  nothing  more  certain  than  that 
an  eye  with  its  axis  immovably  fixed  in  one  direction, 
gives  a  full  and  clear  vision  of  but  a  small  portion  of  space, 
that  to  which  the  axis  directly  points,  and  only  a  faint 
and  indistinct  one  of  the  other  points  surrounding  it. 
When  we  are  able  to  see  any  considerable  portion  ot  a 
surface  so  as  to  form  a  distinct  idea  of  it,  we  do  so  by 
passing  the  eye  over  and  about  it,  changing  slightly  the 
direction  of  the  axis  many  times  in  a  second.  When 
the  eye  is  pointed  directly  to  one  spot,  the  faint  percep- 
tions w:e  have  of  others  are  barely  sufficient  to  serve  as 
indications  for  directing  the  axis  of  the  eye  to  each  of 
them  in  turn,  when  withdrawn  from  the  first.  Physiolo- 
gists have  explained  this  by  the  fact,  that  the  centre  of 
the  retina  is  furnished  with  a  prodigiously  greater  num- 
ber of  nervous  papillse,  much  finer  and  more  delicate 
individually,  and  crowded  closer  together,  than  any  other 
part.  Whatever  be  its  explanation,  the  fact  itself  is 
indubitable ;  and  seems  to  warrant  the  conclusion  that 
if  the  axis  of  the  eye  were  immovable,  and  we  were 
without  the  muscular  sensations  which  accompany  and 
guide  its  movement,  the  impression  we  should  have  of  a 
boundary  between  two  colours  would,  be  so  vague  and 
indistinct  as  to  be  merely  rudimentary, 

A  rudimentary  conception  must  be  allowed,  for  it  is 
evident  that  even  without  moving  the  eye  we  are  capable 
of  having  two  sensations  of  colour  at  once,  and  that  the 
boundary  which  separates  the  colours  must  give  some 
specific  aflfection  of  sight,  otherwise  we  should  have  no 
discriminative  impressions  capable  of  afterwards  becom- 
ing, by  association,  representative  of  the  cognitions  of 
lines  and  figures  which  we  owe  to  the  tactual  and  the  mus- 
cular sense.     But  to  confer  on  these  discriminative  im- 


294  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL   THEORY    OF   THE 

pressions  the  name  which  denotes  our  matured  and  per- 
fected cosfnition  of  Extension,  or  even  to  assume  that  they 
have  in  their  nature  anything  in  common  with  it,  seems 
to  be  going  leyond  the  evidence.  Berkeley  acknow- 
ledged a  very  considerable  amount  of  perception  by  the 
eye  alone,  of  something  which  it  was  possible  to  call 
by  the  name  of  extension  ;  and  that  which  is  so  perceived 
has,  since  his  time,  been  known  to  philosophers  as 
Visible  Extension,  in  contradistinction  to  Tangible. 
But  Berkeley  maintained  that  Visible  Extension  not 
only  is  not  the  same  thing  as  Tangible  Extension,  but 
has  not  the  smallest  likeness  to  it,  and  that  a  person 
born  with  only  one  of  the  two  senses,  and  afterwards 
acquiring  the  other,  would,  until  there  had  been  time  to 
learn  their  mutual  relation  by  experience,  never  suspect 
that  there  was  any  connexion  between  them.  In  point 
of  fact,  those  who  are  born  blind  and  afterwards  acquire 
sight,  know  by  the  information  of  others  that  the  eye 
pictures  and  the  tactual  sensations  come  from  the  same 
objects :  yet  even  with  that  help  it  is  always  a  work  of 
time  and  difficulty  to  connect  the  one  with  the  other. 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  appears  to  think  that  extension  as 
revealed  by  the  eye,  is  identical  with  the  extension  which 
we  know  by  touch,  except  that  it  is  only  in  two  di- 
mensions. "  It  is  not,"  he  says,*  "all  kind  of  extension 
"  and  form  that  is  attributed  to  sight.  It  is  not  figured 
"  extension  in  all  the  three  dimensions,  but  only  extension 
"  as  involved  in  plane  figures ;  that  is,  only  length  and 
"  breadth,"  But  to  have  the  notion  of  extension  even  in 
length  and  breadth  as  we  have  it,  is  to  have  it  in  such  a 
manner  that  we  might  know  certain  muscular  facts 
without  having  tried  :  as,  for  instance,  that  if  we  placed 
our  finger  on  the  spot  corresponding  to  one  end  of  a  line, 
or  boundary  of  a  surface,  we  should  have  to  go  through 
a  muscular  motion  before  we  could  place  it  on  the  other. 
Is  there  the  smallest  reason  to  suppose  that  on  the 
evidence  of  sight  alone,  we  could  arrive  at  this  con- 
clusion ia  anticipation  of  the  sense  of  touch  ?     I  cannot 

*  Lectures,  ii.  160. 


PRIMART   QUALITIES    OF    MATTER.  295 

admit  that  we  could  have  what  is  meant  by  a  perception 
of  superficial  space,  unless  we  conceived  it  as  something 
which  the  hand  could  be  moved  across ;  and,  whatever 
may  be  the  retinal  impression  conveyed  by  the  line 
which  bounds  two  colours,  I  see  no  ground  for  thinking 
that  by  the  eye  alone  we  could  acquire  the  conception  of 
what  we  now  mean  when  we  say  that  one  of  the  colours 
is  outside  the  other.*     On  this  point  I  may  again  quote 

*  The  following  case,  however,  which  I  quote  from  Dr.  M'Cosh 
(pp.  163-165),  if  correctly  reported,  would  require  a  considerable  modifica- 
tion of  the  preceding  doctrine.  "  The  best  reported  case"  of  a  person 
born  bUnd,  but  who  acquired  eyesight  by  means  of  a  surgical  operation, 
"  is  that  of  Dr.  Franz  of  Leipsig  (i'hil.  Trans,  of  Roy.  Soc.  1841).  The 
"  youth  had  been  born  blind,  and  was  seventeen  years  of  age  when  the 
"  experiment  was  wrought  which  gave  him  the  use  of  one  eye.  When  the 
"  eye  was  sufficiently  restored  to  bear  the  light,  a  sheet  of  paper  on  which 
"  two  strong  black  lines  had  been  drawn,  the  one  horizontal,  the  other 
"  vertical,  was  placed  before  him  at  the  distance  of  about  three  feet.  He 
•'  was  now  allowed  to  open  the  eye,  and  after  attentive  examination  he 
"  called  the  lines  by  their  right  denominations,"  that  is,  according  to 
Dr.  M'Cosh,  horizontal  and  vertical.  " '  The  outUne  in  black  of  a  square, 
"  six  inches  in  diameter,  within  which  a  circle  had  been  drawn,  and  within 
"  the  latter  a  triangle,  was,  after  careful  examination,  recognised  and 
"  correctly  described  by  him.'  '  At  the  distance  of  three  feet,  and  on  a 
"  level  with  the  eye,  a  solid  cube  and  a  sphere,  each  of  four  inches  dia- 
"  meter,  was  placed  before  him.'  After  attentively  examining  these 
"  bodies,  he  said  he  saw  a  quadrangular  and  a  circular  figure,  and  after 
"  some  consideration  he  pronounced  the  one  a  square  and  the  other  a  disc. 
"  His  eye  being  then  closed,  the  cube  was  taken  away  and  a  disc  of  equal 
"  size  substituted  and  placed  next  to  the  sphere.  On  again  opening  his 
"  eye  he  observed  no  difference  in  these  objects,  but  regarded  them  both 
"  as  discs.  The  solid  cube  was  now  placed  in  a  somewhat  oblique  posi- 
"  tion  before  the  eye,  and  close  beside  it  a  figure  cut  out  of  pasteboard, 
"  representing  a  plane  outline  prospect  of  the  cube  when  in  this  position. 
"  Both  objects  he  took  to  be  something  like  fiat  quadrates."  [qy.  quadri- 
laterals ?]  "  A  pyramid  placed  before  him  with  one  of  its  sidus  towards 
"  his  eye  he  saw  as  a  plain"  [plane  ?]  "  triangle.  This  object  was  now 
"  turned  a  little,  so  as  to  present  two  of  its  sides  to  view,  but  rather  more 
"  of  one  side  than  of  the  other  :  after  considering  and  examining  it  for  a 
"  long  time,  he  said  that  this  was  a  very  extraordinary  figure  ;  it  was 
"  neither  a  triangle,  nor  a  quadrangle,  nor  a  circle ;  he  had  no  idea  of  it, 
"  and  could  not  describe  it ;  in  fact,  said  he,  I  must  give  it  up.  On  the 
"  conclusion  of  these  experiments,  I  asked  him  to  describe  the  sensations 
"  the  objects  had  produced,  whereupon  he  said,  that  immediately  on 
"  opening  his  eye  he  had  discovered  a  ditference  in  the  two  objects,  the 
"  cube  and  the  sphere,  placed  before  him,  and  perceived  that  they  were 
"  not  drawings ;  but  that  he  had  not  been  able  to  form  from  them  the 
"  idea  of  a  square  and  a  disc,  until  he  perceived  a  sensation  of  what  he  saw 
*'  in  the  points  of  his  fingers,  as  if  he  really  touched  the  object."  (A  very 
significant  fact,  both  psychologically  a  ad  physiologically.)  "  When  I 
"  gave  the  three  bodies  (the  sphere,  cube,  and  pyramid)  into  his  hand,  he 


296  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL   THEORY    OF    THE 

Mr.  Bain.^  "  I  do  not  see  how  one  sensation  can  be 
"  felt  as  out  of  another,  without  already  supposing  that  we 
"  have  a  feelino:  of  space.  If  I  see  two  distinct  objects 
"  before  me,  as  two  candle  flames,  I  apprehend  them  as 
"  different  objects,  and  as  distant  from  one  another  by  an 
"  interval  of  space;  but  this  apprehension  presupposes 
"  an  independent  experience  and  knowledge  of  lineal 
"  extension.     There  is  no  evidence  to  show  that,  at  the 

"  was  much  surprised  he  had  not  recognised  them  as  such  by  sight,  as  he 
"  was  well  acquainted  with  mathematical  figures  by  his  touch." 

The  case  as  stated  looks  like  an  experimental  proof,  that  not  only  some- 
thing which  admits  of  being  called  extension,  but  an  extension  which  is 
promptly  identified  with  that  already  known  by  touch,  though  in  two 
dimensions  only,  may  be  perceived  by  sight  at  the  very  first  use  of  the 
eyes,  before  the  muscular  action  necessary  for  directing  the  eye  has  been 
learnt  by  practice.  There  is  one  suspicious  circumstance  in  the  recital 
— the  youth's  instantaneous  perception  that  the  cube  and  the  sphere  were 
not  drawings  ;  for  how  could  one  who  had  never  before  had  any  sensation 
of  sight,  distinguish  without  help  a  drawing  from  its  object  ?  Cheselden's 
patient  was  for  a  long  time  deceived  by  pictures,  and  asked  which  was  the 
lying  sense,  feeling  or  seeing.  We  ought,  moreover,  to  have  been  ex- 
pressly told  whether,  previous  to  the  operation,  the  blindness  was  abso- 
lutely complete ;  which  in  many  of  the  cases  cited  by  Mr.  Samuel  Bailey 
it  was  not,  and,  according  to  Cheselden,  in  cases  of  congenital  cataract  it 
seldom  is  so.  If  no  material  ciicumstance  is  omitted  in  the  report  of 
Dr.  Franz's  case,  the  doctrine  in  the  text  will  require  a  certain  amount  of 
correction.  What  is  there  called  a  rudimentary  conception  of  figure  by 
the  eye,  must  be  more  than  rudimentary ;  it  must  be,  in  its  way,  con- 
sidorably  developed ;  and  it  must  be  such  that  "  after  attentive  examina- 
tion" it  could  be  recognised  as  corresponding  with  the  circles  and 
quadrangles  already  known  by  touch.  On  this  last  point  the  report  does 
not  agree  with  other  recorded  cases.  In  a  recent  case,  for  example,  re- 
corded by  Mr.  Nunneley  (I  quote  at  second  hand  from  Professor  Fraser 
in  the  North  British  Review)  the  boy  could  indeed,  after  couching,  "  at 
once  perceive  a  difference  in  the  shapes  of  objects,"  could  see  that  the 
cube  and  the  sphere  "  were  not  of  the  same  visible  figure,"  but  could  not 
tell  which  was  which  :  "  it  was  not  till  they  had  been  many  times  placed 
"  in  his  hands,  that  he  learnt  to  distinguish  by  sight  the  one  which  he 
''  had  just  had  in  his  handi-  from  the  other  placed  beside  it.  He  gradually 
"  became  more  correct  in  hi^  judgments,  but  it  was  only  after  several  days 
"  that  he  could  tell  by  the  eye  alone  which  was  the  sphere  and  which  the 
"  cube ;  when  asked,  he  always,  before  answering,  wished  to  take  both  in 
"  his  hands.  Even  when  this  was  allowed,  when  immediately  afterwards 
"  the  objects  were  placed  before  the  eyes,  he  was  not  certain  of  the 
"  figure." 

If  Dr.  Franz's  case  is  fairly  reported,  his  patient  was  probably  of  more 
than  ordinary  natural  quickness  of  observation,  and  identified  the  figures 
not  by  resemblance  proper,  but  by  analogy,  or  resemblance  of  relations. 


*  The  Senses  and  the  Intellect,  2nd  ed.  p.  376 ;  1st  ed.  p.  368. 


PRIMARY   QUALITIES    OP    MATTER.  297 

"  first  sight  of  these  objects,  and  before  any  association 
"  is  formed  between  visible  appearances  and  other  niove- 
"  ments,  I  should  be  able  to  apprehend  in  the  double 
"  appearance  a  difference  of  place.  I  feel  a  distinctness 
"  of  impression,  undoubtedly,  partly  optical  and  partly 
"  muscular,  but  in  order  that  this  distinctness  may  mean 
"  to  me  a  difference  of  position  in  space,  it  must  reveal 
"  the  additional  fact,  that  a  certain  movement  of  my  arm 

Though  beholding  for  the  first  time  a  visual  square  and  circle,  he  was  no 
doubt  aware  through  the  persons  who  surrounded  him,  that  the  objects 
shown  to  his  sight  were  objects  which  could  be  touched — which  he  already 
knew  by  touch.  During  the  "  carefal  examination"  and  "  consideration" 
which  preceded  his  recognition  of  them,  he  was  probably  employed  in 
asking  himself  to  what,  in  his  experience  of  tangible  objects,  these  visible 
objects  bore  the  greatest  affinity.  Now,  he  was  "  well  acquainted  with 
mathematical  figures  by  touch,"  and  had  therefore  acquired  a  complete 
idea  of  a  closed  figure,  and  of  the  boundary  which  encloses  it — the  outline 
separating  object  from  not-object.  A  relation  similar  to  that  between  a 
tangible  figure  and  its  boundary,  exists  between  the  visual  periphery  and 
the  mass  of  colour  it  encloses.  This  mere  analogy  might  be  sufficient  to 
direct  his  choice,  when  a  visual  object  had  at  any  rate  to  be  identified  with 
a  tangible.  The  grand  difficulty  was  in  discovering  that  any  visual  object 
was  the  same  with  any  tangible  :  but,  this  difficulty  once  surmounted  by 
the  information  of  others,  a  small  circumstance  might  give  him  a  hint  for 
pairing  the  one  class  of  objects  with  the  other.  In  his  familiarity,  by 
touch  and  the  muscles,  with  ( let  us  say)  a  triangular  outline,  he  had  become 
aware  of  sudden  and  sharp  bends  in  it,  and  knew  that  there  were  three 
of  these  in  the  tangible  periphery.  There  was  the  same  number  of  pecu- 
liar points  in  the  visual  outline,  which  might  not  spontaneously  have 
reminded  him  of  the  bends  he  knew  by  touch,  but,  if  a  choice  had  to  be 
made,  were  more  analogous  to  them  than  anything  in  a  circular  outline. 
Being  required  therefore  to  give  to  this  object  the  name  of  something 
tangible,  he  was  naturally  led  to  calling  it  a  triangle.  It  is  by  no  means 
evident  that  if  left  entirely  to  himself,  he  would  have  found  out,  except  by 
gradual  experience,  that  the  phaenomenon  analogous  to  extension,  which 
he  perceived  by  sight,  was  the  extension  which  he  already  knew  by  touch. 
I  n:ay  add,  that  since  we  have  from  sight  distinctive  sensations  answering 
to  the  various  figures,  it  is  no  more  than  natural  that  these  sensations, 
however  unlike  the  tactual  sensations  which  they  represent,  should  have 
relations  among  themselves,  resembling  the  mutual  relations  of  those. 
The  same  explanation  may  probably  serve  for  the  lads  ability  to  dis- 
tinguish by  sight  a  vertical  line  from  a  horizontal.  He  was  probably  told 
that  one  of  them  was  horizontal  and  the  other  vertical,  and  was  only 
asked  which  was  which ;  and  without  further  information  we  cannot  tell 
what  small  circumstance  may  have  determined  him  to  guess  the  one 
rather  than  the  other.  To  sum  up  my  view  of  Dr.  Franz's  case,  it  does 
not  prove  that  we  perceive  extension  by  sight,  but  only  that  we  have 
discriminative  sensations  of  sight,  corresponding  to  all  the  diversities  of 
superficial  extension ;  but,  if  rightly  reported,  it  greatly  widens  the  range 
of  those  discriminative  sensations,  and  almost  shows  that  by  sight  alone 
we  might  rise  to  the  height  of  Reid's  Geometry  of  Visibles. 


298  THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF    THE 

"  would  carry  my  hand  from  the  one  flame  to  the  other ; 
"  or  that  some  other  movement  of  mine  would  change  by 
"  definite  amount  the  appearance  I  now  see.  If  no 
"  information  is  conveyed  respecting  the  possibility  of 
"  movements  of  the  body  generally,  no  idea  of  space  is 
"  given,  for  we  never  consider  that  we  have  a  notion 
"  of  space,  unless  we  distinctly  recognise  this  possi- 
"  bility.  But  how  a  vision  to  the  eye  can  reveal 
"  beforehand  what  would  be  the  experience  of  the  hand 
"  or  the  other  moving  members,  i  am  unable  to  un- 
"  derstand."* 

*  To  this  passage,  Mr.  Bain  has  appended,  in  his  second  edition  (p.  377), 
the  following  instructive  note  : — 

"  In  following  a  wide  ranging  movement,  or  in  expatiating  over  a  large 
"  prospect,  we  must  move  the  eyes  or  the  head  ;  and  probably  every  one 
"  would  allow  that,  in  such  a  case,  feelings  of  movement  make  a  part  of 
"  our  sensation  and  our  subsequent  idea.  The  notion  of  a  mountain 
"  evidently  contains  feelings  of  visual  movement.  But  when  we  look  at  a 
"  circle,  say,  one  tenth  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  the  eye  can  take  in  the 
"  whole  of  it  without  movement,  and  we  might  suppose  that  the  sensa- 
"  tion  is,  in  that  case,  purely  optical,  there  being  no  apparent  necessity 
"  for  introducing  the  muscular  consciousness  A  characteristic  optical 
"  impression  is  produced ;  we  should  be  able  to  discriminate  between  the 
"  small  circle  and  a  square,  or  an  oval,  or  between  it  and  a  somewhat  larger 
"  or  somewhat  smaller  circle,  from  the  mere  optical  difference  of  the  effect 
"  on  the  retina.  Why  then  may  we  not  say,  that,  through  the  luminous 
"  tracing  alone,  we  have  the  feeling  of  visible  form  ? 

"  By  making  an  extreme  supposition  of  this  nature,  it  is  possible  to 
"  remove  the  case  from  a  direct  experimental  test.  We  may  still,  how- 
'*  ever,  see  very  strong  grounds  for  maintaining  the  presence  of  a  muscu- 
"  lar  element  even  in  this  instance.  In  the  first  place,  our  notions  of 
"  form  are  manifestly  obtained  by  working  on  the  large  scale,  or  by  the 
"  survey  of  objects  of  such  magnitude  as  to  demand  the  sweep  of  the  eye, 
"  in  order  to  comprehend  them.  We  lay  the  foundations  of  our  knowledge 
"  of  visible  outUne  in  circumstances  where  the  eye  must  be  active,  and 
"  must  mix  its  own  activity  with  the  retinal  feelings.  The  idea  of  a 
"  circle  is  first  gained  by  moving  the  eye  round  some  circular  object  of 
*'  considerable  size.  Having  done  this,  we  transfer  the  fact  of  motion  to 
"  smaller  circles,  although  they  would  not  of  themselves  demand  an  ex- 
"  tensive  ocular  sweep.  So  that  when  we  look  at  a  little  round  body,  we 
"  are  already  pre-occupied  with  the  double  nature  of  visible  form,  and  are 
"  not  in  a  position  to  say  how  we  should  regard  it,  if  that  were  our  first 
"  experience  of  a  circle. 

"  But,  in  the  second  place,  the  essential  import  of  visible  form  is  some- 
"  thing  not  attainable  without  the  experience  of  moving  the  eye.  If  we 
"  looked  at  a  Uttle  round  spot,  we  should  know  an  optical  difference  be- 
"  tween  it  and  a  triangular  spot,  and  we  should  recognise  it  as  identical 
"  with  another  round  spot ;  but  that  is  merely  retinal  knowledge,  or 
"  optical  discrimination.  That  would  not  be  to  recognise  form,  because 
"  by  form  we  never  mean  so  little  as  a  mere  change  of  colour.    We  mean 


PRIMARY    QUALITIES    OF    MATTER.  299 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  does  not  limit  the  perception  of 
Extension  to  sight  and  touch,  either  separately  or  com- 
bined with  one   another,     "  The  opinions,"    he   says,* 

*  so  generally  prevalent,  that  through  touch,  or  touch 

*  and  muscular  feeling,   or  touch   and  sight,  or  touch, 

*  muscular  feeling,  and  sight, — that  through  these  senses, 
'  exclusively,  we  are  percipient  of  extension,  &c.,  I  do 

*  not  admit.     On  the  contrary,  I  hold  that  all  sensations 

*  whatsoever,  of  which  we  are  conscious  as  one  out  of 
'  another,  eo  ipso  afford  us  the  condition  of  immediately 

*  and  necessarily  apprehending  extension  ;    for  in   the 

*  consciousness  itself  of  such  reciprocal  outness  is  actually 

*  involved  a  perception  of  difference  of  place  in  space,  and, 

*  consequently,  of  the  extended."  It  may  safely  be 
admitted  that  whenever  we  are  conscious  of  two  sensa- 
tions as  "  one  out  of  another,"  in  the  sense  of  localit3%  we 
have  a  perception  of  space ;  for  the  two  expressions  are 
equivalent.  But  to  have  a  consciousness  of  difference 
between  two  sensations  which  are  felt  simultaneously, 
is  not  to  feel  them  as  "one  out  of  another"  in  this  sense ; 
and  the  very  question  to  be  decided  is,  whether  any  of 
our  senses,  apart  from  feelings  of  muscular  motion,  gives 
us  the  notion  of  "  one  out  of  another"  in  the  »ense 
necessary  to  support  the  idea  of  Extension. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  thinks  that  whenever  two  different 
nervous  filaments  are  simultaneously  affected  at  their 
extremities,  the  sensations  received  through  them  are 
felt  as  one  out  of  the  other.  It  is  extremely  probable 
that  the  affection  of  two  distinct  nervous  filaments  is  the 
condition  of  the  discriminative  sensibility  which  furnishes 
us  with  sensations  capable  of  becoming  representative  of 
objects  one  out  of  the  other.  But  that  is  a  different 
thing   from    giving   us   the   perception    directly.     Un- 

"  by  a  round  form  sometliiiig  that  would  take  a  given  sweep  of  the  eje  to 
"  comprehend  it ;  and  unless  we  identify  the  small  spot  with  the  circles 
"  previously  seen,  we  do  not  perceive  it  to  be  a  circle.  It  may  remain  in 
"  our  mind  as  a  purely  optical  meaning ;  but  we  can  never  cross  the  chasm 
"  that  separates  an  optical  meaning  from  an  effect  combining  Light  and 
"  movement,  in  any  other  way  than  by  bringing  in  an  experience  of  move- 
"  ment." 

*  Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  861. 


300  THE   PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF    THE 

doubtedly  we  recognise  difference  of  place  in  the  objects 
which  affect  our  senses,  whenever  we  are  aware  that  tliose 
objects  affect  different  parts  of  our  organism.  But  when 
we  are  aware  of  this,  we  already  have  the  notion  of  Place. 
We  must  be  aware  of  the  different  parts  of  our  body  as 
one  out  of  another,  before  we  can  use  this  knowledge  as 
a  means  of  cognising  a  similar  fact  in  regard  to  other 
material  objects.  This  Sir  W.  Hamilton  admits  ;  and 
what,  therefore,  he  is. bound  to  prove  is,  that  the  very 
first  time  we  received  an  impression  of  touch,  or  of  any 
other  sense,  affecting  more  than  one  nerv^ous  filament,  we 
were  conscious  of  being  affected  in  a  plurality  of  places. 
This  he  does  not  even  attempt  to  do  ;  and  direct  proof  is 
palpably  unattainable.  As  a  matter  of  indirect  evidence, 
we  may  oppose  to  this  theory  Mr.  Bain's,  according  to 
which,  apart  from  association,  we  should  not  have  any 
impression  of  this  kind,  and  should  in  general  be  con- 
scious only  of  a  greater  mass  or  "  volume"  of  sensation 
when  we  were  affected  in  two  places,  than  when  only  in 
one  ;  like  the  more  massive  sensation  of  heat  which  we 
feel  when  our  bodies  are  immersed  in  a  warm  bath,  com- 
pared with  that  which  we  feel  when  heat  of  the  same,  or 
even  of  greater  intensity,  is  applied  only  to  our  hands  or 
feet.  Mr.  Bain's  doctrine,  being  as  consistent  with  the 
admitted  facts  of  the  case  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton's,  has  a 
good  claim,  on  his  own  law  of  Parcimony,  to  be  pre- 
ferred to  it.  But,  besides,  there  are  recorded  facts  which 
agree  with  Mr.  Bain's  theory,  and  are  quite  irreconcilable 
with  Sir  W.  Hamilton's ;  and  to  find  such  we  need  not 
travel  beyond  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  own  pages. 

One  of  them  is  the  very  case  we  have  already  had  before 
us,  that  recorded  by  Platner.  The  facts  of  this  case  are 
quite  inconsistent  with  the  opinion,  that  we  have  a  direct 
perception  of  extension  when  an  object  touches  us  in 
more  than  one  place,  including  the  extremities  of  more 
than  one  nervous  filament.  Platner  expressly  says  that 
his  patient,  when  an  object  touched  a  considerable  part 
of  the  surface  of  his  body,  but  without  exciting  more 
tlian  one  kind  of  sensation,  w^as  conscious  of  no  local  dif- 


PRIMARY    QUALITIES    OF    MATTER.  301 

ference — no  "  outness"  of  one  part  of  the  sensation  in 
relation  to  another  part — but  only  (we  may  presume)  of 
a  greater  quantity  of  sensation  ;  as  Mr.  Bain  would  call 
it,  a  greater  volume.  As  Platner  expresses  it,  "  if  objects 
"  and  the  parts  of  his  body  touched  by  them,  did  not 
"  make  different  kinds  of  impression  on  his  nerves  of 
"  sensation,  he  would  take  everything  external  for  one 
"  and  the  same.  In  his  own  bodj^  he  absolutely  did  not 
**  discriminate  head  and  foot  at  all  by  their  distance,  but 
"  merely  by  the  difference  of  the  feelings."  Such  an 
experiment,  reported  by  a  competent  observer,  is  of 
itself  almost  enough  to  overthrow  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
theory. 

In  like  manner,  the  patient  in  Cheselden's  celebrated 
case,  after  his  second  eye  was  couched,  described  himself 
as  seeing  objects  twice  as  large  with  both  eyes  as  with 
one  only  ;  that  is,  he  had  a  double  quantity,  or  double 
volume  of  sensation,  which  suggested  to  his  mind  the 
idea  of  a  double  size.* 

Another  case,  for  the  knowledge  of  which  I  am  also 
indebted  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton — who  knew  it  through  an 
abstract  given  by  M.  Maine  de  Biran  of  the  original 
report  by  M.  Eey  Regis,  a  medical  observer,  in  his 
"  Histoire  Naiurelle  de  lAme" — is  as  incompatible  with 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory  as  Platner's  case.     It  is  the  case 

*  I  may  here  observe  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  (and  the  same  mistake  has 
been  made  by  Mr.  Bailey)  considers  Cheselden's  case  as  evidence  that  the 
"  perception  of  externality,"  as  distinguished  from  that  of  distance  from 
the  eye,  is  given  by  sight  as  well  as  by  touch,  because  the  young  man  said 
that  objects  at  first  seemed  "  to  touch  his  eyes,  as  what  he  felt  did  his 
skin."  (Foot-note  to  Reid,  p.  177.)  He  seems  to  think  that,  on  the  other 
theory,  the  boy  should  have  been  metaphysician  enough  to  recognise  in 
the  perception  "  a  mere  affection  of  the  organ,"  or  at  least  should  have 
perceived  the  objects  "  as  if  in  his  eyes."  But  he  was  not  accustomed  to 
conceive  tangible  objects  as  if  in  his  fingers.  He  conceived  them  as 
touching  his  fingers  :  and  he  simply  transferred  the  experience  of  touch 
to  the  newly-acquired  sense.  All  his  notions  of  perception  were  associated 
with  direct  contact ;  and  as  he  did  not  perceive  any  of  the  objects  of 
sight  to  be  at  a  distance  from  the  organ  by  which  he  perceived  them,  he 
concluded  that  they  must  be  in  contact  with  it. 

Mr.  Nunneley's  case,  on  this  point,  agrees  with  Cheselden's.  The  boy 
"  said  everything  touched  his  eyes,  and  walked  carefully  about  with  his 
"  hands  held  up  before  him,  to  prevent  things  hurting  his  eyes  by  touch- 
■"  ing  them." 


riuAA    r»Ju^  ^-c«-C  fc  kxuu^     . 

302  THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OF    THE 

of  a  patient  wlio  lost  the  power  of  movement  in  one-half 
of  his  body,  apparently  from  temporary  paralysis  of  the 
motory  nerves,  while  the  functions  of  the  sensory  nerves 
seemed  unimpaired.  This  patient,  it  was  found,  had 
lost  the  power  of  localizing  his  sensations.  "  Experi- 
"  ments,*  various  and  repeated,  were  made  to  ascertain 
"  with  accuracy,  whether  the  loss  of  motive  faculty  had 
"  occasioned  any  alteration  in  the  capacity  of  feeling ;  and 
"  it  was  found  that  the  patient,  though  as  acutely  alive 
"  as  ever  to  the  sense  of  pain,  felt,  when  this  was  secretly 
"  inflicted,  as  by  compression  of  his  hand  under  the 
"  bedclothes,  a  sensation  of  suffering  or  uneasiness,  by 
"  which,  when  the  pressure  became  strong,  he  was  com- 
'  *'  pelled  lustily  to  cry  out;  but  a  sensation  merely 
"  general,  he  being  altogether  unable  to  localize  the 
"  feeling,  or  to  say  whence  the  pain  proceeded.  .  .  .  The 
"  patient,  as  he  gradually  recovered  the  use  of  his  limbs, 
"  gradually  also  recovered  the  power  of  localizing  his 
"  sensations."  It  would  be  premature  to  establish  a 
scientific  inference  upon  a  single  experiment :  but  if 
confirmed  by  repetition,  this  is  an  experimentum  crucis. 
So  far  as  one  experiment  can  avail,  it  proves,  that  sensa- 
tion without  motion  does  not  give  the  perception  of 
difference  of  place  in  our  bodily  organs  (not  to  speak 
of  outward  objects),  and  that  this  perception  is  even 
now  entirely  an  inference,  dependent  on  the  muscular 
feelings.f 

It  gives  a  very  favourable  idea  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
sincerity  and  devotion  to  truth,  that  he  should  have 
drawn  from  their  obscurity,  and  made  generally  known, 
two  cases  which  make  such  havoc  with  his  own  opinions 

•  Dissertations  on  Reid,  pp.  874,  875. 
t  Dr.  M'Coah  says  (p.  151) :  "  This  case  is  valueless,  as  evidently  the 
functions  of  the  nervous  apparatus  were  deranged."  I  am  far  from  pre- 
tending that  this  single  experiment  is  conclusive ;  but  I  can  as  little 
admit  that  it  ought  to  count  for  nothing.  The  functions  of  the  motor 
nerves  were  deranged ;  but  no  derangement  appears  to  have  been  re- 
marked in  those  of  the  nerves  of  sensation  ;  unless,  by  a  petitio  principii, 
the  incapacity  of  localizing  the  sensations  is  considered  to  prove  it.  We 
cannot  indeed  prove  that  those  nerves  were  not  also  in  a  morbid  state  : 
but  pathological  cases,  which  are  admitted  to  be  the  nearest  equivalents 


PRIMARY    QUALITIES   OF    MATTER.  303 

as  this  and  Platner's  ;  for  though  he  did  not  believe  the 
cases  to  be  really  inconsistent  with  his  theory,  he  can 
hardly  have  been  entirely  unaware  that  they  could  be 
used  against  it. 

The  only  other  point  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  doctrines 
respecting  the  Primary  Qualities  which  it  is  of  impor- 
tance to  notice,  is  one,  I  believe,  peculiar  to  himself,  and 
certainly  not  common  to  him  with  any  of  his  eminent 
predecessors  in  the  same  school  of  thought.  It  is  the 
doctrine,  that  those  qualities  are  not  perceived — are  not 
directly  and  immediately  cognized — in  things  external 
to  our  bodies,  but  onl}'"  in  our  bodies  themselves.  "  A 
**  Perception,"  he  says,*  "of  the  Primary  Qualities  does 
*'  not,  originally,  and  in  itself,  reveal  to  us  the  existence, 
"  and  qualitative  existence,  of  aught  beyond  the  organism, 
"  apprehended  by  us  as  extended,  figured,  divided,  &c. 
**  The  primary  qualities  of  things  external  to  our  organism 
'*  we  do  not  perceive,  i.e.  immediately  know.  For  these 
"  we  only  learn  to  infer,  from  the  affections  which  we 
*'  come  to  find  that  they  determine  in  our  organs  ; — affec- 
"  tions  which,  yielding  us  a  perception  of  organic  ex- 
"  tension,  we  at  length  discover,  by  observation  and 
"  induction,  to  imply  a  corresponding  extension  in  the 
"  extra-organic  agents."  Neither,  according  to  him,  do 
we  perceive,  or  immediately  know,  "  extension  in  its  true 
and  absolute  magnitude ;"  our  perceptions  giving  dif- 
ferent impressions  of  magnitude  from  the  same  object, 
when  placed  in  contact  with  different  parts  of  our  body. 
"  As  perceived  extension  is  only  the  recognition  of  one 
"  organic  affection  in  its  outness  from  another ;  as  a 
*'  minimum   of  extension   is   thus,    to   perception,   the 

in  physiology  to  experiments  in  inorganic  science,  would  lose  all  their 
scientific  value  if  it  could  be  assumed  without  evidence  that  the  disease 
extended  to  other  functions  than  those  in  which  it  was  observed.  Even 
if  a  physical  derangement  were  proved,  one  not  unimportant  point  would 
have  been  ascertained  by  the  experiment — that  a  morbid  affection  may 
take  away  the  power  of  localizing  sensations,  without  taking  away  the 
sensations.  Localization,  therefore,  does  not  depend  on  the  same  con- 
ditions with  the  sensations  themselves,  still  less  is  it  inseparably  involved 
in  them. 

*  Dissertations  on  Reid,  pp.  881,  882. 


304  THE    PSTCHOLOGICAL    THEORY    OP   THE 

"  smallest  extent  of  organism  in  which  sensations  can 
"  be  discriminated  as  plural;  and  as  in  one  part  of  the 
"  organism  this  smallest  extent  is  perhaps  some  million, 
"  certainly  some  myriad,  times  smaller  than  in  others  ; 
"  it  follows  that,  to  perception,  the  same  real  exten- 
"  sion  will  appear,  in  this  place  of  the  body,  some 
"  million  or  myriad  times  greater  than  in  that.  Nor 
"  does  this  difference  subsist  only  as  between  sense 
"  and  sense ;  for  in  the  same  sense,  and  even  in  that 
"  sense  which  has  very  commonly  been  held  exclu- 
"  sively  to  afford  a  knowledge  of  absolute  extension,  I 
"  mean  Touch  proper,  the  minimum,  at  one  part  of 
"  the  body,  is  some  fifty  times  greater  than  it  is  at 
"  another." 

Thus,  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  all  our  cogni- 
tions of  extension  and  figure  in  anything  except  our  own 
body,  and  of  the  real  amount  of  extension  even  in  that, 
.are  not  perceptions,  or  states  of  direct  consciousness,  but 
"  inferences,"  and  even  inferences  "  by  observation  and 
induction"  from  our  experience.  Now,  we  know  how 
contemptuous  he  is  of  Brown,  and  other  "  Cosmothetic 
Idealists,"  for  maintaining  that  the  existence  of  exten- 
sion or  extended  objects  otherwise  than  as  an  affection 
of  our  own  minds,  is  not  a  direct  perception  but  an 
inference.  We  know  how  he  reproaches  this  opinion 
with  being  subversive  of  our  Natural  Beliefs  ;  how  often 
he  repeats  that  the  testimony  of  consciousness  must  be 
accepted  entire,  or  not  accepted  at  all ;  how  earnestly 
and  in  how  many  places  he  maintains  "  that  we  have 
"  not  merely  a  notion,  a  conception,  an  imagination,  a 
"  subjective  representation  of  Extension,  for  example, 
"  called  up  or  suggested  in  some  incomprehensible  man- 
"  ner  to  the  mind,  on  the  occasion  of  an  extended  object 
"  being  presented  to  the  sense  ;  but  that  in  the  percep- 
"  tion  of  such  an  object  we  have,  as  by  nature  we  believe 
"  we  have,  an  immediate  knowledge  or  consciousness  of 
"  that  external  object  as  extended.  In  a  word,  that  in 
"  sensitive  perception,  the  extension  as  known,  and  the 
"  extension  as  existing,  are  convertible ;  known  because 


PRIMARY    QUALITIES    OF    MATTER.  305 

"  existing,  and  existing,  since  known."*  All  this,  it 
appears,  is  only  true  of  the  extension  of  our  own 
bodies.  The  extension  of  any  other  body  is  not  known 
immediately  or  by  perception,  but  as  an  inference  from 
the  former.  I  ask  any  one,  whether  this  opinion  does 
not  contradict  our  "  natural  beliefs"  as  much  as  any 
opinion  of  the  Cosmothetic  Idealists  can  do ;  whether 
to  the  natural,  or  non-metaphysical  man,  it  is  not  as  great 
a  paradox  to  affirm  that  we  do  not  perceive  extension 
in  anything  external  to  our  bodies,  as  that  we  do  not 
perceive  extension  in  anything  external  to  our  minds ; 
and  whether,  if  the  natural  man  can  be  brought  to 
assent  to  the  former,  he  will  find  any  additional  strange- 
ness or  apparent  absurdity  in  the  latter.  This  is  only 
one  of  the  many  instances  in  which  the  philosopher  who 
so  vehemently  accuses  other  thinkers  of  affirming  the 
absolute  authority  of  Consciousness  when  it  is  on  their 
own  side,  and  rejecting  it  when  it  is  not,  lays  himself 
open  to  a  similar  charge.  The  truth  is,  it  is  a  charge 
from  which  no  psychologist,  not  E-eid  himself,  is  exempt. 
No  person  of  competent  understanding  has  ever  applied 
himself  to  the  study  of  the  human  mind,  and  not  dis- 
covered that  some  of  the  common  opinions  of  mankind 
respecting  their  mental  consciousness  are  false,  and  that 
some  notions,  apparently  intuitive,  are  really  acquired. 
Every  psychologist  draws  the  line  where  he  thinks  it  can 
be  drawn  most  truly.  Of  course  it  is  possible  that  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  has  drawn  it  in  the  right  place,  and  Brown 
in  the  wrong.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  would  say  that  the 
common  opinions  which  he  contests  are  not  Natural 
Beliefs,  though  mistaken  for  such.  And  Brown  thinks 
exactly  the  same  of  those  which  are  repugnant  to  his 
own  doctrine.  Neither  of  them  can  justify  himself  but 
by  pointing  out  a  mode  in  which  the  apparent  percep- 
tions, supposed  to  be  original,  may  have  been  acquired ; 
and  neither  can  charge  the  other  with  anything  worse 
than  having  made  a  mistake  in  this  extremely  delicate 

*  Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  842. 
X 


306  NOTE    TO    THE    PRECEDING    CHAPTER. 

process  of  psychological  analysis.  Neither  of  them  has 
a  right  to  give  to  a  mistake  in  such  a  matter,  the  name 
of  a  rejection  of  the  testimony  of  consciousness,  and 
attempt  to  bring  down  the  other  by  an  argument  which 
is  of  no  possible  value  except  ad  invidiam,  and  which  in 
its  invidious  sense  is  applicable  to  them  both,  and  to  all 
psychologists  deserving  the  name. 

NOTE  TO  THE  PEECEDING  CHAPTER. 

A  host  of  critics,  headed  by  Dr.  M'Cosh,  Mr.  Mahaffy,  and  the  writer 
in  Blackwood,  have  directed  their  shafts  against  this  chapter ;  but  Pro- 
fessor Fraser,  himself  a  host,  is  on  my  side.  The  essential  point  in  the 
controversy  being  the  analysis  of  Extension,  I  shall  confine  my  notice  to 
the  arguments  bearing  upon  that  point. 

The  principal  objection  is  the  same  which  was  made  to  the  two  preced- 
ing chapters :  that  the  explanation  given  of  Extension  presupposes 
Extension  :  that  the  notion  itself  is  surreptitiously  introduced,  to  account 
for  its  owu  origin.  The  case  of  the  objectors  is  most  compactly  stated 
by  Mr.  MahaflFy,  in  the  following  extract  :* — 

"  The  briefest  way  of  criticizing  the  long  passage"  [quoted  from  Mr. 
Bain]  "  will  be  to  enumerate  its  fallacies  in  general  heads,  (a)  A  know- 
"  ledge  of  our  organism  as  extended  must  not  be  begged,  when  we  are 
"  going  to  explain  extension  ;  hence,  such  expressions  as  the  '  range  of  a 
*'  limb'  or  '  sweep  of  a  limb,'  must  either  be  carefully  confined  to  the 
"  mere  succession  of  feelings  in  moving  it,  or  they  beg  the  question  :  and 
"  indeed,  as  suggesting  extension  in  the  very  statement,  they  should  be 
"  avoided  when  we  are  describing  the  phenomena  from  which  extension  is 
"to  be  derived.  (j3)  Any  mention  or  postulating  of  direction  cannot  be 
"  for  a  moment  allowed ;  for  what  possible  meaning  can  direction  have  ex- 
"  cept  in  space  ?  In  particular,  lineal  (by  which  I  suppose  Mr.  Bain 
"  principally  means  rectilinear)  direction  would  be  only  given  with  great 
"  difficulty  by  the  moving  of  limbs,  and  we  should  be  brought  back  to 
"  the  old  Greek  notion  of  circular  motion  being  the  most  natural.  This 
"  difficulty,  as  well  as  a  host  of  others,  are  urged  with  great  aciiteness  by 
"  Mr.  Abbott.  {Sight  and  Touch,  chap,  v.)  More  especially  he  states, 
"  from  E.  H.  Weber,  that  touch  cannot  give  us  the  idea  of  a  right  line  at 
"  all,  and  consequently  not  the  slightest  idea  of  direction  (y)  No  such 
"  notion  as  velocity  or  rapidity  can  be  admitted,  far  less  such  a  notion  as 
"  the  comparison  of  quicker  and  slower  motions.  In  fact,  the  idea  of  motion 
"  requires"  as  its  logical  antecedent  both  space  and  time,  and  is  not  iden- 
"  tical  with  pure  succession.  Suppose  we  had  nothing  but  the  series  of 
"  our  thoughts  to  analyse,  we  could  never  get  beyond  the  idea  of  a  series, 
"  nor  could  we  ever  by  any  chance  get  the  notion  of  acceleration  or  retar- 
"  dation  in  it.  .For  what  is  quicker  or  slower  ?  Nothing  but  more  space 
*'  traversed  in  less  time,  and  vice  versa.  Motion  cannot  be  apprehended 
"  without  something  fixed,  which  is  only  given  us  by  relations  of  space,  as 
"  Kant  has  well  shown.     The  motion  of  our  thoughts,  then,  is  in  the  first 


*  Mahaffy,  pp.  xviii.-xx. 


NOTE   TO    THE    PRECEDING    CHAPTER.  307 

"  place,  only  an  analogical  expression ;  and  secondly,  could  never  have 
"  been  felt  without  something  in  space  whereby  not  only  to  measure  the 
"  increased  or  diminished  velocity  of  our  thinking,  but  even  to  learn 
"  that  there  is  any  velocity  at  all  in  the  matter.  The  evidence  of  dreaming 
"  seems  to  corroborate  this  view.  Why  is  it,  that,  the  intuitions  of  velocity 
"  afforded  us  by  space  being  removed,  the  current  of  thoughts  is  found 
"  by  itself  completely  incompetent  to  suggest  or  estimate  speed  at  all  ? 
"  (S)  What  we  necessarily  use  to  measure  extension  must  not  for  that  reason 
"  have  originally  suggested  it.  And  yet  all  that  the  association  school 
"  ever  attempt  to  prove  is  only  this :  that  aU  the  measures  of  extension 
"  can  be  traced  to  series  of  muscular  feelings  in  time.  The  knowledge  of 
"  extension  is  one  thing,  and  primitive ;  the  measure  of  extension  is 
"  another,  and  empirical ;  and  we  should  not  accept  Mr.  Bain's  confusion 
"  of  them  together  (perhaps  identification  of  them),  without  some  further 
"  proof  than  his  bare  statement. 

"  Upon  all  these  assumptions,  however,  the  theory  of  Mr.  Bain  is  based, 
"  and  the  intelligent  reader  will  find  them  scattered  over  the  very  surface 
"  of  the  argument.  I  would  call  particular  attention  to  the  passage  .  .  . 
"  '  We  must  learn  to  feel  that  a  slow  motion  for  a  long  time  is  the  same 
"  as  a  quicker  motion  with  less  duration,  which  we  can  easily  do  by  seeing 
"  that  they  both  produce  the  same  effect  in  exhausting  the  full  range  of 
"  the  limb.'  Surely  it  is  clear  that  without  space  we  could  never  get  the 
"  idea  of  motion,  which  involves  space  as  much  as  time — in  fact,  a  series 
"  in  time  only  changes,  it  does  not  move  ;  and  even  granting  we  had  the 
"  idea,  we  could  never  discriminate  whether  that  motion  was  quicker  or 
"  slower,  except  the  notion  of  something  permanent  in  space,  and  motion 
"  in  space,  were  given.     The  same  petitio  princi pit  is  made  by  Mr.  Mill." 

This  oi-derly  and  succinct  mode  of  setting  forth  the  objection  is  a  great 
convenience  for  answering  it,  I  shall  take  Mr.  Mahaffy's  points  in  his 
own  order. 

(a)  The  phraseology  employed  to  express  the  data  common  to  both 
parties  must,  at  least  in  the  commencement,  be  that  which  common  lan- 
guage affords ;  since  no  other  would  enable  the  reader  to  understand,  with- 
out a  laborious  process,  on  a  subject  already  so  difficult,  what  are  the  facts 
meant.  But  the  phraseology,  of  course,  must  not  be  so  used  as  to  assume 
anything  which  either  the  theory  itself,  or  the  theory  opposed  to  it,  does 
not  admit.  As  Mr.  Mahaffy  observes,  "  such  expressions  as  the  range  of 
a  limb,  or  the  sweep  of  a  limb,"  must  "be  carefully  confined  to  the 
mere  succession  of  feelings  in  moving  it "  And  if  the  reader  turns  back 
to  the  first  of  the  quoted  passages,  he  will  find  that  Mr.  Bain  has  been 
most  industrious  in  directing  attention  to  the  feelings  involved  in  the 
motion  of  a  limb,  as  the  point  to  be  attended  to,  in  contradistinction  to 
the  motion  itself,  and  in  showing  that  his  expressions  are  to  be  under- 
stood of  the  former,  and  not  of  the  latter. 

{/3)  Direction,  Mr.  Mahaffy  maintains,  must  not  be  mentioned  or  re- 
ferred to  in  the  analysis  of  extension,  because  direction  means  space,  and 
space  must  not  be  called  in  to  account  for  itself.  It  would  have  been 
nearer  the  truth  if,  instead  of  saying  that  direction  means  space,  he  had 
said  that  space  means  direction.  Space  is  the  ageregate  of  directions,  as 
Time  is  of  successions.  To  postulate  direction,  therefore,  is  to  postulate, 
not  space,  but  the  element  which  the  notion  of  space  is  made  of.  Mr. 
Bain,  however,  does  not  postulate  direction.  He  postulates  the  distinc- 
tive sensations  which,  from  the  first,  accompany  the  motions  of  a  limb  in 
what  we,  with  our  acquired  perceptions,  call  variety  of  directions.  There 
are  such  distinctive  sensations,  otherwise  we  should  not  even  now  know, 

X  2 


'    ^08        ,  NOTE^TO   THE    PRECEDING    CHAPTER.  ' 


t 


¥■ 


when  our  eyes  are  shut,  in  what  direction  our  arm  is  moving.  According 
to  Mr.  Bain,  the  difference  in  the  sensations  depends  on  the  difference  in 
the  muscles  exerted.  "  All  directions  that  call  forth  the  play  of  the  same 
*'  muscles,  are  similar  directions  as  respects  the  body  :  different  muscles 
"  mean  different  directions."*  These  sensations,  shading,  as  they  do, 
gradually  into  one  another,  without  abruptness  or  break,  are  well  fitted 
to  give  rise  to  the  feeling  of  continuity,  which  unites  all  our  different 
notions  of  different  directions  into  one  notion  of  space.f 

(7)  Velocity  or  rapidity,  comparison  of  quicker  and  slower  motions, 
must  not,  Mr.  Mahaify  says,  be  postulated,  because  quicker  or  slower  have 
no  meaning  but  with  reference  to  the  greater  or  smaller  space  traversed 
in  a  given  time.  It  is  true  that  the  two  motions  derive  their  name  from 
space.;  but  are  the  motions  themselves  therefore  undistinguishable  ?  A 
saw  and  a  hatchet  are  so  called  on  account  of  the  different  kind  of  work 
they  do ;  but  can  we  not  also  distinguish  the  two  objects  when  we  see 
them  ?  Again  I  say,  what  is  postiilated  is  not  the  space  traversed,  but 
the  greater  or  less  energy  of  the  muscular  sensation.  It  only  remains  to 
be  explained  how  we  learn  that  a  more  energetic  sensation  lasting  a  shorter 
time,  is  equivalent  to  a  less  energy  continued  for  a  longer  time.  Mr. 
Bain  thinks  we  learn  this  by  their  both  producing  the  same  effect  in 
.  "  exhausting  the  full  range  of  the  limb ;"  by  which  he  means,  attaining 
the  extreme  limit  of  the  sensation  which  accompanies  protension — the 
jjoint  beyond  which  no  further  addition  to  it  can  be  made.  Where  is  the 
jyetitio  principii  here  ?  I  think  that  the  solution  is  an  admissible  one — 
that  we  may  fairly  be  supposed  to  take  the  entire  series  of  the  sensations 


*  The  Senses  and  the  Intellect,  p.  203  (second  edition). 

t  With  regard  to  Mr.  Abbott's  difficulties,  the  following  is  a  speci- 
men of  them :  "  Let  us  suppose  a  blind  man  trying  to  get  the  notion 
"  of  distance  from  the  motion  of  his  hand.  He  finds  a  certain  sweep  of 
"  the  hand  brings  it  into  contact  with  a  desk  ;  the  distance  of  which, 
*'  therefore,  is  represented  by  that  effort.  But  it  requires  a  greater  effort 
•"  to  reach  the  eyes  or  the  nose  ;  and  distance  being=locomotive  effort,  it  is 
*'  demonstrated  that  the  nose  extends  beyond  the  desk.  The  top  of  the 
■*'  head  must  be  conceived  as  more  remote,  and  the  back  farthest  of  all." 
Mr.  Abbott  seems  to  suppose  that  a  blind  man's  permanent  impression 
of  the  distance  of  objects  from  him,  will  be  derived  from  his  very  first  ex- 
periment; and  denies  him  the  common  privilege  belonging  to  all  expe- 
rience, of  correcting  and  completing  itself.  If  the  nose  is  really  nearer  to 
his  hand  than  the  desk,  will  he  not  soon  find  a  way  of  reaching  the  nearer 
object  with  less  locomotive  effort  than  the  more  distant?  If  it  be  said, 
that  this  can  only  be  done  by  bending  his  arm,  and  that  flexure  of  the 
arm  is  attended  with  more  sense  of  effort  than  protension  of  it,  the  an- 
swer is  that  even  if  this  were  true,  the  effort  is  of  a  different  kind  ;  and 
the  blind  man  would  speedily  distinguish  between  the  two,  and  would 
learn  that  objects  reached  by  his  bended  arm  are  nearer  to  his  body,  by 
all  the  other  tests  of  proximity,  than  those  which  can  only  be  reached 
with  the  arm  extended.  Dr.  M'Cosh  (p.  135)  falls  into  a  fallacy  of  the 
same  kind, 

Mr.  Abbott's  book,  a  repetition  of  the  attack  made  by  Mr.  Bailey  on 
Berkeley's  Theory  of  Vision,  has  sufficient  ability  to  require  an  answer  by 
itself,  had  not  this  been  effectually  done  by  Professor  Fraser  in  an  elabo- 
rate and  able  paper  in  the  North  British  Review  for  August,  1864,  which 
I  trust  win  eventually  be  reprinted  in  a  more  permanent  form. 


NOTE    TO   THE    PRECEDING    CHAPTER.  309 

which  accompany  the  stretching  out  of  the  limb,  as  a  nnit  of  measure- 
ment, divisible  into  an  ascending  scale  of  degrees,  which  may  be  passed 
through  in  a  shorter  or  a  longer  time,  but  the  sum  of  which  is  always 
equal  to  itself.  I  have  myself  pointed  out  another  road  by  which  we 
might  arrive  at  the  same  equivalence.  We  have  two  simultaneous 
sensations  of  touch  with  our  two  hands.  We  then  move  the  right  hand 
until  it  joins  the  left,  and  touches  the  same  Object.  It  need  not  be 
supposed  that  we  yet  know  them  as  our  hands,  or  the  object  as  a  body, 
or  know  of  our  right  hand  as  moving  through  space.  But  the  two 
simultaneous  sensations  of  touch,  either  of  which  we  may  prolong  or 
repeat  at  pleasure,  have  given  us  the  notion  of  a  permanent  element 
in  touch,  and  of  two  such  permanent  elements  as  coexisting.  We  have 
now  had  the  two  sensations  of  touch  with  a  single  hand,  but  separated 
by  a  series  of  the  sensations  accompanying  muscular  movement :  and  we 
find  that  to  get  from  one  of  the  tactual  sensations  to  the  other  requires 
a  shorter  time,  in  proportion  to  the  energy  of  the  intervening  muscular 
sensations.  In  this  mental  process  time  is  postulated,  but  not  space : 
and  it  is  contended  that  the  shorter  time,  or  its  equivalent,  the  greater 
energy,  required  to  get  from  one  object  of  touch  to  another  already 
recognised  as  simultaneous,  is  the  measure,  in  the  last  resort,  of  their 
distance  in  space.  The  eye  then  comes  in,  and  with  its  greater  powers 
of  simultaneous  sensation,  it  gathers  up,  by  its  acquired  perceptions, 
a  host  of  such  measurements  in  one  apparent  intuition. 

(8)  "  What  we  necessarily  use  to  measure  extension"  need  not,  as  Mr. 
Mahaffy  justly  observes,  have  originally  suggested  it :  but  if  all  the  facts 
of  consciousness  involved  in  what  we  call  extension  can  be  accounted  for 
on  the  supposition  that  the  measure  is  the  thing  itself,  no  other  evidence 
needs  be  required  *  The  apparent  testimony  of  consciousness  to  a 
difference  between  them,  is  perfectly  explicable  by  the  totally  altered 
aspect  which,  as  I  have  shown  in  the  text,  our  cognizance  of  Extension 
puts  on  when  the  sense  of  sight  has  assumed  the  lead  of  it.  When  a 
larger  collection  of  carefully  observed  facts  respecting  persons  blind  from 
birth,  shall  have  been  subjected  to  an  acuter  and  more  discriminating 
analysis,  the  additional  insight  which  we  may  hope  to  obtain  into  the 
psychology  of  such  persons,  will  probably  dissipate  the  remains  of  ob- 
scurity which  still  hang  over  some  of  the  details  of  the  subject. 

Dr.  M'Cosh  and  the  writer  in  Blackwood  are  constructive  thinkers  as 
well  as  critics,  and  endeavour  to  prove,  in  a  direct  manner,  that  the 
notion  of  extension  is  not  acquired  through  our  muscular  sensations." 
The  evidence  on  which  they  chiefly  insist  is  that  antecedently  to  expe- 
rience, we  localize  our  sensations  at  different  points  of  our  body :  accord- 
ing to  Dr.  M'Cosh,  at  the  extremities  of  the  nerve-fibres ;  every  sensation 
being,  by  nature,  felt  at  the  point  where  the  nerve  terminates.  The 
writer  in  Blackwood^  says,  "  We  do  not  commence  our  sentient  life  with 


*  The  writer  in  Blackwood  thinks  it  absurd  that  the  measure  should 
"measure  itself"  (p.  32) — that  muscular  sensation,  as  a  measure  of 
distance,  should  be  employed  in  measuring  muscular  sensation.  But 
are  not  quantities  usually  measured  by  quantities  of  the  same  kind  ?  A 
foot  rule  measures  length  by  its  own  length.  A  bushel  measures  sohd 
contents  by  its  own  contents.  The  tickings  of  a  clock  measure  other 
successions  by  their  own  succession.  A  weight  measures  other  weights 
by  itself. 

t  Pp.  26,  27. 


310  NOTE  TO    THE  PRECEDING    CHAPTER. 

"  sensations  felt  nowhere — we  certainly  tave  no  memory  of  pains  that 
"  were  not  felt  somewhere — in  that  arena,  in  fact,  which  we  come  to  call 
"  our  body."  The  absence  of  remembrance  of  what  took  place  soon  after 
birth  being,  aa  I  have  so  often  observed,  no  proof  that  it  did  not  happen, 
the  proof  offered  is,  "  that  no  ingenuity  whatever  will  get  our  pains  into 
"  our  bodies,  or  give  us  knowledge  of  these  bodies,  unless  we  commence 
"  with  the  admission  that  certain  pains  and  pleasures  of  a  physical  order 
"  are,  as  soon  as  they  attain  to  any  distinctness,  felt  in  different  parts  of 
"  a  certain  arena,  thus  localizing  each  other.  .  .  .  Many  writers  describe 
"  this  localization  as  an  acquired  perception.  Now,  no  one  doubts  for  a 
"  moment  that  the  accurate  localization  of  our  sensations  is  acquired  by 
*'  experience ;  but  that  experience,  we  maintain,  would  not  be  possible 
"  were  there  not  some  vague  localization  given  us  at  once,  by  simulta- 
"  neons  sensations  felt  in  different  parts  of  our  system.  How  else  do  we 
"  get  our  first  idea  of  space  or  position  p"  To  this  last  question  I  have 
already  endeavoured  to  give  an  answer.*  With  regard  to  the  locali- 
zation, so  far  as  it  regards  our  external  sensations,  I  see  no  difficulty  in 
believing  that  it  takes  place  altogether  by  the  process  to  which,  as  the 
writer  admits,  we  are  indebted  for  our  power  of  "  accurate  localization." 
I  am  bit  by  an  animal,  or  my  skin  is  irritated  at  some  point,  and  I  am  at 
first  unable,  as  occasionally  happens  even  now,  to  fix  the  exact  place  of 
the  sensation.  I  move  my  hand  along  the  surface  until  I  find  the  place 
where  the  friction  of  the  hand  relieves  the  irritation,  or  where  its  contact 
increases  the  smart.  I  am  now  expressing  these  facts  in  the  ordinary 
language  of  mankind,  but  I  have  sufficiently  explained  the  sense  which 
that  language  bears  in  my  own  doctrine.  The  view  I  have  taken  of  the 
manner  in  which  we  obtain  our  cognition  of  place,  does  not  rest  on  any 
previous  localization,  even  vague,  of  our  sensations.  Nor  does  the  loca- 
lizing of  a  sensation,  say  in  one  of  our  limbs,  amount  to  anything  but 
attributing  to  the  sensation  an  uniform  and  close  conjunction,  either  syn- 
chronous or  by  immediate  succession,  with  the  group  of  sensations  of 
various  kinds  which  constitute  my  perception  of  the  limb.  In  general 
we  probably  first  discover  that  the  sensation  is  connected  with  the  limb, 
by  i^erceiving  that  the  exciting  cause  of  the  sensation  is  connected  with  it. 
Mr.  Bain  states  the  matter  as  follows  :t  "  I  can  associate  one  pain  with 
"  the  sight  of  my  finger,  another  pain  with  the  sight  of  my  toe, 
"  and  a  third  with  the  position  of  my  arm  that  determines  the  crown  of 
"  my  head.  An  infant  at  the  outset  knows  not  where  to  look  for  the 
"  cause  of  an  irritation  when  anything  touches  it ;  by  and  by  the  child 
"  observes  a  coincidence  between  a  feeling  and  a  pi'essure  operating  on 
"  some  one  part ;  whence  a  feeling  in  the  hand  is  associated  with  the 
"  sight  of  the  hand,  and  so  for  other  members. — When  the  feeling  is  more 


*  If  distance  and  direction  are  explicable  in  the  way  I  have  pointed 
out,  place  and  position  follow  by  obvious  consequence.  If  once  it  be 
admitted  that  impressions  of  touch  can  be  cognised  as  at  once  simul- 
taneous and  separated  by  a  series  of  muscular  feelings,  i.e.  at  once  distant 
and  simultaneous,  and  that  this  amounts  to  cognising  them  as  in  space  ; 
the  position  of  these  impressions  among  one  another,  which  constitutes 
their  place,  will  easily  result  from  the  different  quantities  of  muscular 
sensation  required  for  passing  from  one  to  the  other,  combined  with  the 
distinctive  qualities  of  the  muscular  sensation  dependent  on  what  we  call 
difference  in  the  direction  of  the  motion. 

t  The  Senses  and  the  Intellect,  pp.  397,  398  (2nd  ed.) 


NOTE    TO    THE    PRECEDING    CHAPTER.  311 

"  internal,  as  in  the  interior  of  the  trunk,  we  have  greater  diflSculty  in 
"  tracing  the  precise  seat,  often  we  are  quite  at  a  loss  on  the  point.  In 
"  this  case  we  have  to  trust  to  some  indications  that  come  to  the  surface, 
"  or  to  the  effect  of  superficial  pressure  on  the  deep  parts.  By  getting  a 
"  blow  on  the  ribs  we  come  to  connect  feelings  in  the  chest  with  the  place 
"  in  our  map  of  the  body :  we  can  thus  make  experiments  on  the  deep- 
"  seated  organs  and  learn  the  meaning  of  their  indications.  But  the  more 
*'  inaccessible  the  parts,  the  more  uncertainty  is  there  in  assigning  the 
"  locality  of  their  sensations."  There  are  some  difficulties,  not  yet  com- 
pletely resolved,  respecting  the  localization  of  our  internal  pains,  for  the 
solution  of  which  we  need  more  careful  and  intelligent  observation  of 
infants.  But  I  think  enough  is  known  to  show  that  the  localization  of  our 
sensations  is  not  the  starting  point  of  our  knowledge  of  place  and  position, 
but  follows  it.  It  is  true  that  (as  Dr.  M'Cosh  observes*)  "  if  a  child  is 
wounded  in  the  arm,  it  will  not  hold  out  its  foot."  But,  before  it  has 
given  evidence  of  having  "  any  acquired  perceptions,"  will  it  hold  out  its 
arm  either  ?  On  the  theory  that  the  localization  is  an  acquired  percep- 
tion, it  should  do  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.f 

Dr.  M'Cosh  has  another  argument  to  prove  that  we  have  an  original 
power  of  localizing  our  sensations,  and,  strange  to  say,  it  is  the  very  one 
which  is  usually  thought  to  be  the  strongest  proof  that  the  power  is  ac- 
quired :  viz.,  the  persistence  of  the  association  which  makes  us  refer  sen- 
sations to  a  limb,  after  the  limb  has  been  cut  off.  "  Miiller,"  says  Dr. 
M'Cosh,J  "  has  collected  a  number  of  such  cases,"  of  which  one  will  be 
a  sufficient  sample  :  "a  student  named  Schmidts,  from  Aix,  had  his  arm 
"  amputated  above  the  elbow  thirteen  years  ago ;  he  has  never  ceased  to 
"  have  sensations  as  if  in  the  fingers."  It  is  a  singular  oversight  in 
Dr.  M'Cosh  to  adduce  these  facts  as  proof  that  we  localize  the  sensation 
at  the  extremities  of  the  nerves.  He  forgets  that  after  the  arm  was  cut 
off,  the  extremity  of  the  nerve  was  in  the  stump,  and  that  it  is  there,  and 
not  in  the  fingers,  that,  if  his  theory  were  true,  the  sensation  ought  to  have 
been  felt.  The  reference  of  it-  to  the  limb  which  was  gone  could  only  be  a 
case  of  irresistible  association.  It  does  not  directly  negative  the  existence 
of  an  instinctive  localization  ;  but  it  proves  that,  if  there  be  any  such,  an 
acquired  association  can  overpower  it.  So  in  respect  to  the  following 
fact,  also  quoted  from  Miiller  :§  "  When,  in  the  restoration  of  a  nose,  a 
"  flap  of  skin  is  turned  down  from  the  forehead  and  made  to  unite  with 
"  the  stump  of  the  nose,  the  new  nose  thus  formed  has,  as  long  as  the 
"  isthmus  of  skin  by  which  it  maintains  its  original  connexions  remains 
"  undivided,  the  same  sensations  as  if  it  were  still  on  the  forehead ;  in 
"  other  words,  when  the  nose  is  touched,  the  patient  feels  the  impression 
"  in  the  forehead."     But  the  ner\-e  that  conveys  the  impression  no  longer 


*  M'Cosh,  p.  150. 
t  Dr.  M'Cosh  says  (same  page)  "  It  is  hard  to  believe  that  the 
"  instantaneous  voluntary  drawing  back  of  a  limb  when  wounded,  and 
"  the  shrinking  of  the  frame  when  boiling  liquid  is  poured  down  the 
"  throat,  can  proceed  from  an  application  of  an  observed  law  as  to  the 
"  seat  of  sensations."  The  obvious  solution  of  this  difficulty  is,  that  both 
the  drawing  back  and  the  shrinking,  when  they  take  place  in  an  ex- 
tremely young  infant,  are  purely  automatic ;  a  reflex  action,  produced, 
without  the  intervention  of  the  will,  by  the  irritation  of  the  motor  nerves  : 
a  solution  quite  conformable  to  physiology. 

1   P.  148.  S  P.  149. 


312        NOTE  TO  THE  PRECEDING  CHAPTER. 

terminates  in  tlie  forehead ;  it  terminates  in  tlie  new  nose  ;  and  according 
to  Dr.  M'Cosh's  theory  the  sensation  should  be  felt  there,  exactly  as  it  is 
after  the  "  isthmus  of  skin"  has  been  divided,  the  old  nervous  connexion 
cut  off,  and  a  new  one  gradually  formed.  Dr.  M'Cosh's  facts  well  nigh 
destroy  his  own  theory ;  but  they  are  such  as,  on  the  association  theory, 
would  certainly  happen.  The  last,  especially,  is  of  great  value  to  that 
theory,  because  it  is  one  of  the  strongest  instances  which  show  that  there 
is  a  distinctive  "  Quale"  (as  one  of  Dr.  M'Cosh's  German  authorities  calls 
it)  belonging  to  the  sensation  conveyed  by  each  one  of  the  nerves,  which 
hinders  it  from  being  confounded  with  the  sensation  conveyed  by  any 
other  nerve,  and  enables  it  to  form  associations  special  to  itself  with  the 
part  of  the  body  it  serves,  which,  as  we  see,  persist  even  after  it  has  been 
taken  away  to  serve  another  part. 

Dr.  M'Cosh,  in  his  reply,  denies  that  his  facts  conflict  with  his  theory, 
for  his  theory  is,  that  we  intuitively  localize  our  sensatioiis,  not  where  the 
nerves  really  terminate,  but  where  they  "  normally"  terminate  ;  that  is, 
not  where  the  termination  is,  but  where  it  ought  to  be.  In  other  words, 
we,  naturally  and  intuitively,  feel  our  sensations  in  a  place  which,  in  the 
case  of  an  amputated  limb,  is  not  onlj  outside  our  body,  but  may  be  at  a 
distance  of  one  or  two  feet  from  it :  and  this  seat  of  sensation  in  the  space 
outside  our  bodies  follows  us  wherever  we  go.  This  is  what  Dr.  M'Cosh 
would  rather  believe,  than  that  the  reference  of  the  feeling  to  such  a  place 
is  an  illusion  produced  by  association.  In  support  of  his  opinion  he 
refers  to  a  case  mentioned  by  Professor  Valentin  (along  with  three  others 
of  a  similar  character)  in  which  a  girl  whose  left  hand  was  congenitally 
imperfect,  said  she  had  the  internal  sensation  of  a  palm  of  the  hand  and 
five  fingers  (which  she  did  not  possess)  as  perfectly  in  her  left  hand  as  in 
her  right.  But  what  does  this  prove,  except  that  she  had  the  same  sensa- 
tions in  the  nerves  of  her  left  hand  as  in  those  of  her  right,  which  of 
course,  therefore,  carried  the  same  association.  Dr.  M'Cosh  should  show 
a  case  in  which  sensations  were  referred  to  non-existent  fingers  when  there 
were  no  real  fingers  to  suggest  the  notion. 

According  to  Dr.  M'Cosh,  the  reference  of  sensations  to  a  lost  limb 
contradicts  not  his  but  the  association  theory ;  since  the  lapse  of  years 
after  the  loss  of  the  limb  would  be  sufficient  to  destroy  the  old  association. 
And  this,  in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  it  probably  does.  Exit  it  is  a 
frequent  experience  that  a  sensation  exactly  like  one  we  have  formerly  felt, 
and  like  nothing  else,  revives  even  after  many  years  a  long  forgotten 
remembrance.  Again,  Dr. M'Cosh  says  that  in  the  case  of  the  new  nose,  the 
affection,  according  to  the  association  theory,  "  should  have  been  felt  in 
"  the  forehead,  not  till  the  isthmus  was  cut,  but  till  the  old  association  was 
"  gone ;  and  this,"  according  to  me,  "  might  not  have  been  for  twenty 
"  years."  This  overlooks  an  important  feature  in  the  case.  When  not 
only  the  old  nervous  connexion  has  been  cut  off,  but  a  new  one  formed, 
between  the  new  nose  and  the  nervous  trunk  which  connected  the  old  nose 
with  the  brain,  the  sensations  become  identical  with  those  which  were 
referred  to  the  old  nose  when  it  existed  ;  and  the  reference  of  them  to  the 
nose  is  thus  supported  by  as  old  and  strong  an  association  as  the  previous 
reference  of  them  to  the  forehead :  with  the  difference  that  while  every 
day  helps  to  dissolve  the  one  association,  every  day  strengthens  and  rivets 
the  other. 

The  only  further  case  referred  to  by  Dr.  M'Cosh,  is  one  mentioned  by 
Schopenhauer*  on  the  authority  of  Prorieps;  that  of  "  Eva  Lauk,  an  Estho- 

*  Die  Welt  als  Wille  und  Yorstellung,  ed.  1844,  vol.  ii.  p.  40. 


NOTE   TO    THE    PRECEDING   CHAPTER.  313 

"  nian  girl,  fourteen  yeara  old.bom without  arms  or  legs,  but  who,  according 
"  to  her  mother,  had  developed  herself  intellectually  quite  as  rapidly  as  her 
"  brothers  and  sisters,  and  without  the  use  of  limbs  had  reached  a  correct 
"  judgment  concerning  the  magnitude  and  distance  of  visible  objects,  quite 
"  as  quickly  as  they."  This,  unfortunately,  is  all  the  information  wnich 
Schopenhauer  gives  on  this  interesting  case.  In  Dr.  M'Cosh's  judgment,  it 
entirely  disproves  the  opinion  "  that  a  sweep  of  the  arm  or  leg,  considered 
merely  as  a  group  of  sensations  without  extension,"  could  give  the  idea  of 
extension.  He  means,  probably,  that  it  proves  that  the  idea  can  be  acquired 
without  any  use  of  arms  or  legs.  But  we  do  not  know  of  what  nature  the 
girl's  idea  of  extension  was.  What  we  are  told  is,  that  she  had  notions  of 
magnitude  and  distance,  which  she  applied  to  objects  with  the  same 
correctness  as  other  people.  But  her  notion  of  distance  may  have  been 
only  such  as  could  be  formed  by  the  time  expended  in  being  carried  to 
the  spot ;"  and  her  notion  of  magnitude  may  have  been  acquired  when 
objects  were  in  contact  with  her  body — perhaps  still  by  means  of  muscular 
feelings  of  pressure  and  motion.  Above  all,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
the  girl  was  surrounded  by  people  possessing  legs  and  arms,  and  had 
their  aid  in  associating  the  discriminating  sensations  of  sight  with  the 
facts,  of  touch  and  of  the  muscles,  to  which  they  correspond.  Such  assis- 
tance is  a  great  help  even  to  children  who  have  the  ordinary  complement 
of  legs  and  arms ;  they  all  must  acquire  the  association  much  more 
quickly  through  the  help  given  them  by  the  acts  and  words  of  other 
people.  It  may  be  confidently  assumed  that  Eva  Lank  had  this  help, 
probably  in  more  than  usual  measure,  and  did  not  find  out  wholly  by  her- 
self that  a  greater  mass  of  visual  sensation  indicated  a  greater  mass  of 
tactual  sensation  answering  to  it. 

I  believe  I  have  noticed  every  plausible  objection  to  Mr.  Bain's  and  my 
own  analysis  of  Extension,  which  has  a  sufficiently  individual  character 
to  require  an  answer  by  itself.  The  subject  is  in  need  of  further  study 
before  all  its  obscure  comers  will  be  completely  lighted  up ;  but  this  it 
can  hardly  fail  to  receive,  now  that  highly  competent  thinkers  are  engaged 
in  extending  our  knowledge  of  the  Mind  by  the  application  of  the  Psyche 
logical  Method,  grounded  on  the  Laws  of  Association. 


314  INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


HOW    SIR  WILLIAM    HAMILTON   AND    MR.    MANSEL  DISPOSE 
OF   THE    LAW    OF    INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION. 

It  has  been  obvious  in  the  preceding  discussions,  and  is 
known  to  all  who  have  studied  the  best  masters  of  what 
I  have  called  the  Psychological,  in  opposition  to  the 
merely  Introspective  method  of  metaphysical  enquiry, 
that  the  principal  instrument  employed  by  them  for 
unlocking  the  deeper  mysteries  of  mental  science,  is  the 
Law  of  Inseparable  Association.  This  law,  which  it 
would  seem  specially  incumbent  on  the  Intuitive  school 
of  metaphysicians  to  take  into  serious  consideration, 
because  it  is  the  basis  of  the  rival  theory  which  they 
have  to  encounter  at  every  point,  and  which  it  is  necessary 
for  them  to  refute  first,  as  the  condition  of  establishing 
their  own,  is  not  so  much  rejected  as  ignored  by  them. 
Reid  and  Stewart,  who  had  met  with  it  only  in  Hartley, 
thought  it  needless  to  take  the  trouble  of  understanding 
it.  The  best  informed  German  and  French  philosophers 
are  barely  aware,  if  even  aware,  of  its  existence.*  And 
in  this  country  and  age,  in  which  it  has  been  employed 
by  thinkers  of  the  highest  order  as  the  most  potent  of 
all  instruments  of  psychological  analysis,  the  opposite 
school  usually  dismiss  itwith  a  few  sentences,  so  smoothly 
gliding  over  the  surface  of  the  subject,  as  to  prove  that 

*  As  lately  as  the  year  1864  has  been  published  the  first  work  (I  believe) 
in  the  French  language,  which  recognises  the  Association  Psychology  in 
its  modern  developments  :  an  able  and  instructive  "  Etude  sur  1' Associa- 
tion des  Idees,"  by  M.  P.  M.  Mervoyer.  Since  then,  the  excellent 
introductory  discourses  prefixed  by  M.  Gazelles  to  his  translations  from 
the  English  psychologists,  and  the  remarkable  work  of  M.  Taine,  "  De 
rintelligence,"  have,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  permanently  naturalized  the 
Association  Psychology  among  French  thinkers  and  students. 


BY    SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AND    MR.    MANSEL.       315 

they  have  never,  even  for  an  instant,  brought  the  powers 
of  their  minds  into  real  and  tffective  contact  with  it. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  written  a  rather  elaborate  Dis- 
sertation on  the  Laws  of  Association ;  and  the  more 
elementary  of  them  had  engaged  a  considerable  share  of 
his  attention.*  But  he  nowhere  shows  that  he  had  the 
smallest  suspicion  of  this,  the  least  familiar  and  most 
imperfectly  understood  of  these  laws.  I  find  in  all  his 
writings  only  two  or  three  passages  in  which  he  touches, 

*  In  this  Dissertation,  which  originally  broke  off  abruptly,  but  the  con- 
clusion of  which  has  recently  been  supplied  from  the  author's  papers,  he 
attempts  to  simplify  the  theory  of  Association  ;  reducing  Association  by 
Resemblance,  not  indeed  to  Association  by  Contiguity,  but  to  that  com- 
bined with  an  elementary  law,  for  the  first  time  expressly  laid  down  by 
Sir  W.  Hamilton,  though  implied  in  all  Association  and  in  all  Memory : 
viz  ,that  a  present  sensation  or  thought  suggests  the  remembrance  of  what 
he  calls  the  same  sensation  or  thought  (meaning  one  exactly  similar)  ex- 
perienced at  a  former  time.  This  leaves  Resemblance  of  simple  sensations 
as  a  distinct  principle  of  association,  the  foundation  of  all  the  rest,  while 
it  resolves  resemblance  of  complex  phenomena  into  that  simple  principle 
combined  with  the  law  of  Contiguity. 

By  virtue  of  this  speculation,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  thinks  it  possible  to 
reduce  Association  to  a  single  law :  "  Those  thoughts  suggest  each  other, 
"  which  had  previously  constituted  parts  of  the  same  entire  or  total  act  of 
"  cognition."  (Lectures,  ii.  238,  and  the  corresponding  passages  of  the 
Dissertation.)  This  appears  to  me,  I  confess,  far  from  a  happy  effort  of 
generalization  ;  for  there  is  no  possibility  of  bringing  under  it  the  elemen- 
tary case  of  suggestion,  which  our  author  has  the  merit  of  being  the  first 
to  put  into  scientific  language.  The  sweet  taste  of  to-day,  and  the  similar 
sweet  taste  of  a  week  ago  which  it  reminds  me  of,  have  not  "  previously 
constituted  parts  of  the  same  act  of  cognition ;"  unless  we  take  Uterally  the 
expression  by  which  they  are  spoken  of  as  the  same  taste,  though  they 
are  no  m<-'re  the  same  taste  than  two  men  are  the  same  man  if  they  happen 
to  be  exactly  alike.  It  is  a  further  objection,  that  the  attempted  simplifi- 
cation, even  if  otherwise  correct,  would  merely  unite  two  clear  notions 
into  one  obscure  one ;  for  the  notion  of  feelings  which  suggest  one 
another  because  they  resemble,  or  because  they  have  been  experienced 
together,  is  universally  intelligible,  while  that  of  forming  parts  of  the 
same  act  of  cognition  involves  all  the  metaphysical  difficulties  which  sur- 
round the  ideas  of  Unity,  Totality,  and  Parts. 

After  thus,  as  he  fancies,  reducing  all  the  phsenoraena  of  Association  to 
a  single  law.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  asks,  how  is  this  law  itself  explained  ? 
and  justly  observes  that  it  may  be  an  ultimate  law,  and  that  ultimate  laws 
are  necessarily  unexplainable.  But  he  nevertheless  quotes,  with  some 
approbation,  an  attempt  by  a  German  writer,  H.  Schmid,  to  explain  it  by 
an  a  priori  theory  of  the  human  mind,  which  may  be  recommended  to 
notice  as  a  choice  specimen  of  a  school  of  German  metaphysicians  who 
have  remained  several  centuries  behind  the  progress  of  philosophical 
enquiry,  having  never  yet  felt  the  influence  of  the  Baconian  reform.  See 
Lectures,  ii.  2i0-243, 


316  INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 

even  cursorily,  on  this  mode  of  explaining  mental  phse- 
nomena.  The  first  and  longest  ot'  these  occurs  in  the 
treatment,  not  of  any  of  the  greater  problems  of  mental 
philosophy,  but  of  a  very  minor  question  ;  whether,  in 
the  perception  of  outward  objects,  our  cognition  of 
wholes  precedes  that  of  their  component  parts,  or  the 
contrary.  More  fully  ;  "  whether,  in  Perception,  do  we 
"  first  obtain  a  general  knowledge  of  the  complex  wholes 
"  presented  to  us  by  sense,  and  then,  by  anal3'^sis  and 
"  limited  attention,  obtain  a  special  knowledge  of  their 
"  several  parts ;  or  do  we  not  first  obtain  a  particular 
"  knowledge  of  the  smallest  parts  to  which  sense  is 
"  competent,  and  then,  by  synthesis,  collect  them  into 
"  greater  and  greater  wholes  ?"*  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
declares  for  the  first  theory,  and  quotes  as  supporters  of 
the  second,  Stewart  and  James  Mill ;  to  the  latter  of 
whom,  more  than  to  any  other  thinker,  mankind  are 
indebted  for  recalling  the  attention  ot  philosophers  to 
the  law  of  Inseparable  Association,  and  pointing  out 
the  important  applications  of  which  it  is  susceptible. 
Through  the  confiict  with  Mr.  Mill  on  the  very  sub- 
ordinate question  which  he  is  discussing.  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton is  led  to  quote  a  part  of  that  philosopher's  exposition 
of  Inseparable  Association  ;  and  it  is  a  sign  how  little 
he  was  aware  of  the  importance  of  the  subject,  that  a 
theory  of  so  wide  a  scope  and  such  large  consequences 
should  receive  the  only  recognition  he  ever  gives  it  in  a 
bye  corner  of  his  work,  incidentally  to  one  ot  the  smallest 
questions  therein  discussed.  I  shall  extract  the  very 
passages  which  he  quotes  from  Mr.  Mill,  because,  in  a 
small  space,  they  state  and  illustrate  very  happily  the 
two  most  characteristic  properties  of  our  closest  associa- 
tions :  that  ttie  suggestions  they  produce  are,  for  the 
time,  irresistible ;  and  that  the  suggested  ideas  (at  least 
when  the  association  is  of  the  synchronous  kind  as 
distinguished  from  the  successive)  become  so  blended 
together,  that  the  compound  result  appears,  to  our  con- 
sciousness, simple. 

*  Lectures,  ii.  144. 


BY   SIR   Wn.LlAM    HAMILTON    AND    MR.   MANSEL.       317 

"  Where  two  or  more  ideas,"  says  Mr.  Mill,*  "  have 
"  been  often  repeated  together,  and  the  association  has 
"  become  very  strong,  they  sometimes  springy  up  in  such 
"  close  combination  as  not  to  be  distinguishable.  Some 
**  cases  of  sensation  are  analogous.  For  example,  when 
"  a  wheel,  on  the  seven  parts  of  which  the  seven  pris- 
"  matic  colours  are  respectively  painted,  is  made  to  re- 
"  volve  rapidly,  it  appears  not  of  seven  colours,  but  of 
"  one  uniform  colour,  white.  By  the  rapidity  of  the 
"  succession,  the  several  sensations  cease  to  be  distin- 
"  guishable  ;  they  run,  as  it  were,  together,  and  a  new 
"  sensation,  compounded  of  all  the  seven,  but  apparently 
"  a  single  one,  is  the  result.  Ideas,  also,  which  have 
^'  been  so  often  conjoined,  that  whenever  one  exists  in 
*'  the  mind,  the  others  immediately  exist  along  with  it, 
"  seem  to  run  one  into  another,  to  coalesce,  as  it  were, 
"  and  out  of  many  to  form  one  idea ;  which  idea,  how- 
"  ever  in  reality  complex,  appears  to  be  no  less  simple 
*'  than  any  one  of  those  of  which  it  is  compounded.   .  .   . 

"  It  is  to  this  great  law  of  association  that  we  trace 
"  the  formation  of  our  ideas  of  what  we  call  external 
"  objects  ;  that  is,  the  ideas  of  a  certain  number  of  sensa- 
*'  tions  received  together  so  frequently  that  they  coalesce, 
"  as  it  were,  and  are  spoken  of  under  the  idea  of  unity. 
"  Hence  what  we  call  the  idea  of  a  tree,  the  idea  of  a 
"  stone,  the  idea  of  a  horse,  the  idea  of  a  man. 

"  In  using  the  names,  tree,  horse,  man,  the  names  of^ 
"  w^hat  I  call  objects,  I  am  referring,  and  can  be  referring, 
"  only  to  my  own  sensations ;  in  fact,  therefore,  only 
"  naming  a  certain  number  of  sensations,  regarded  as  in 
*'  a  particular  state  of  combination  ;  that  is,  of  con- 
*'  comitance.  Particular  sensations  of  sight,  of  touch,  of 
"  the  muscles,  are  the  sensations,  to  the  ideas  of  which, 
"  colour,  extension,  roughness,  hardness,  smoothness, 
*'  taste,  smell,  so  coalescing  as  to  appear  one  idea,  I  give 
"  the  name  idea  of  a  tree.  • 

"  To  this  case  of  high  association,  this  blending  to- 
*'  gather  of  many  ideas,  in  so  close  a  combination  that 

*  Analysis  of  the  Human  Mind,  i.  68-75. 


318  INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 

"  they  appear  not  many  ideas,  but  one  idea,  we  owe,  as 
"  I  shall  afterwards  more  fully  explain,  the  power  of 
''  classification,  and  all  the  advantages  of  language. 
"  It  is  obviously,  therefore,  of  the  greatest  moment, 
*'  that  this  important  phsenomenon  should  be  well 
"  understood. 

"  Some  ideas  are  by  frequency  and  strength  of  asso- 
'*  ciation  so  closely  combined  that  they  cannot  be  sepa- 
"  rated.  If  one  exists,  the  other  exists  along  with  it,  in 
"  spite  of  whatever  effort  we  may  make  to  disjoin  them. 

"  For  example ;  it  is  not  in  our  power  to  think  of 
**  colour,  without  thinking  of  extension  ;  or  of  solidity, 
"  without  figure.  We  have  seen  colour  constantly  in 
"  combination  with  extension,  spread,  as  it  were,  upon  a' 
"  surface.  We  have  never  seen  it  except  in  this  con- 
"  nexion.  Colour  and  extension  have  been  invariably 
"  conjoined.  The  idea  of  colour,  therefore,  uniformly 
"  comes  into  mind,  bringing  that  of  extension  along 
"  with  it ;  and  so  close  is  the  association,  that  it  is  not  in 
"  our  power  to  dissolve  it.  We  cannot,  if  we  will,  think 
*'  of  colour,  but  in  combination  with  extension.  The 
"  one  idea  calls  up  the  other,  and  retains  it,  so  long  as 
"  the  other  is  retained. 

"  This  great  law  of  our  nature  is  illustrated  in  a  man- 
"  ner  equally  striking  by  the  connexion  between  the  ideas 
"  of  solidity  and  figure.  We  never  have  the  sensations 
"  from  which  the  idea  of  solidity  is  derived,  but  in  con- 
*' junction  with  the  sensations  wherice  the  idea  of  figure 
**  is  derived.  If  we  handle  anything  solid  it  is  always 
"  either  round,  square,  or  of  some  other  ibrm.  The  ideas 
"  correspond  with  the  sensations.  If  the  idea  of  solidity 
"  rises,  that  of  figure  rises  along  with  it.  The  idea  of 
"  figure  which  rises  is,  of  course,  more  obscure  than  that 
"  of  extension ;  because,  figures  being  innumerable,  the 
"  general  idea  is  exceedingly  complex,  and  hence,  of 
"  necessity,  obscure.  But  such  as  it  is,  the  idea  of  figure 
"  is  always  present  when  that  of  solidity  is  present ;  nor 
"can  we,  by  any  effort,  think  of  the  one  without  think- 
"  ing  of  the  other  at  the  same  time." 


BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AND    MR.    MANSEL.       319 

Other  illustrations  follow,  concluding  with  these  words : 
"  The  following  of  one  idea  after  another,  or  after  a  sen- 
"  sation,  so  certainly  that  we  cannot  prevent  the  com- 
"  bination,  nor  avoid  having  the  consequent  feeling  as  often 
"  as  we  have  the  antecedent,  is  a  law  of  association,  the  ope- 
**  ration  of  which  we  shall  afterwards  find  to  be  extensive, 
"  and  bearing  a  principal  part  in  some  of  the  most  impor- 
"  tantpha^nomenaof  the  human  mind."  And  the  promise 
of  this  sentence  is  amply  redeemed  in  the  sequel  of  the 
treatise. 

The  only  remark  which  this  highly  philosophical  ex- 
position suggests  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  is  a  disparaging 
reflection  on  Mr.  Mill's  philosophy  in  general.  He 
says  that  Mr.  Mill,  in  his  "ingenious"  treatise,  "has 
"  pushed  the  principle  of  Association  to  an  extreme  which 
"  refutes  its  own  exaggeration, — analysing  not  only  our 
"  belief  in  the  relation  of  effect  and  cause  into  that  prin- 
"  ciple,  but  even  the  primary  logical  laws,"  so  that  it  is  no 
wonder  he  should  "  account  for  our  knowledge  of  com- 
"  plex  wholes  in  perception,  by  the  same  universal  prin- 
"  ciple."  Having,  on  the  strength  of  this  previous 
verdict  of  exaggeration,  dispensed  with  enquiring  how 
much  the  law  of  Inseparable  Association  can  really 
accomplish,  he  makes  no  use  of  its  most  obvious  appli- 
cations, even  while  transcribing  them  into  his  own  pages. 
One  of  the  psychological  facts  stated  in  the  passage 
quoted,  the  impossibility,  to  us,  of  separating  the  idea 
of  extension  and  that  of  colour,  is  a  truth  strongly  in- 
sisted on  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  himself.  In  the  very 
next  Lecture  but  one  to  that  from  which  I  have  been 
quoting,  he  strenuously  maintains,  that  we  can  neither 
conceive  colour  without  extension,  nor  extension  without 
colour.  Even  the  born  blind,  he  thinks,  have  the  sensa- 
tion of  darkness,  that  is,  of  black  colour,  and  mentally 
clothe  all  extended  objects  with  it.*  Except  the  last 
position,  which  has  no  evidence  and  no  probability,!  the 

*  Lectures,  ii.  168-172. 
t  According  to  the  doctrine  of  all  advanced  psychologists,  to  which  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  gives  an  express  adhesion,  it  is  impossible  to  have  a  conscious- 


320  INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 

doctrine  is  undoubtedly  true,  and  the  fact  is  so  obviously 
a  case  of  the  law  of  association,  that  even  Stewart,  little 
partial  as  he  was  to  that  mode  of  explaining  mental 
phaenomena,  does  not  dream  of  attributing  it  to  anything 
else.  "  In  consequence,"  says  Stewart,  "  of  our  always 
"  perceiving  extension  at  the  same  time  at  which  the 
"  sensation  of  colour  is  excited  in  the  mind,  we  find  it 
"  impossible  to  think  of  that  sensation  without  conceiving 
"  extension  along  with  it."  He  gives  this  as  one  of  the 
instances  "  of  very  intimate  associations  formed  between 
"  two  ideas  which  have  no  necessary  connexion  with  one 
"  another."  A  mental  analysis  by  way  of  association 
which  was  sufficiently  obvious  to  recommend  itself  to 
Stewart,  will  scarcely  be  charged  with  "  pushing  the 
principle  to  an  extreme."  In  fact,  if  an  association  can 
ever  become  inseparable  by  dint  of  repetition,  how 
could  the  association  between  colour  and  extension  fail 
of  being  so?  The  two  facts  never  exist  but  in  imme- 
diate conjunction,  and  the  experience  of  that  conjunction 
is  repeated  at  every  moment  of  life  which  is  not  spent 
in  darkness.  Yet  after  transcribing  this  explanation 
both  from  Stewart  and  from  Mill,  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
remains  as  insensible  to  it  as  if  it  had  never  been  given  ; 
and  without  a  word  of  refutation,  composedly  registers 
the  inseparablene  ;s  of  the  two  ideas  as  an  ultimate  men- 
tal fact  proving  t  lem  both  to  be  original  perceptions  of 
the  same  organ,  the  eye.  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  aathority 
can  have  little  weight  against  the  doctrine  which  ac- 
counts for  the  more  complex  parts  of  our  mental  consti- 
tution by  the  laws  of  association,  when  it  is  so  evident 
that  he  rejected  that  doctrine  not  because  he  had  ex- 

ness  of  darkness  without  having  had  a  consciousness  of  light.  Besides, 
it  is  a  notorious  optical  fact  that  a  completely  black  object  occupying  the 
whole  sphere  of  vision  is  invisible  :  it  reflects  no  light.  Blackness,  therefore, 
(the  complete  blackness  of  absolute  darkness,)  is  not  a  sensation,  but  the 
total  absence  of  sensation  ;  it  is,  in  fact,  nothing  at  all ;  and  to  say  that  a 
person  born  blind  cannot  imagine  extension  without  clothing  it  with 
nothing  at  all,  is  to  assert  something  not  very  intelligible.  In  the  case 
of  a  person  who  has  become  blind,  it  might  have  a  meaning ;  for  blackness 
to  him,  like  darkness  to  us,  does  not  stand  for  mere  inability  to  see,  but 
for  the  usual  effort  to  see,  not  followed  by  the  usual  consequence. 


BY    SIR  WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AND    MR.    M ANSEL.       321 

amiued  it  and  found  it  wanting,  but  without  examining 
it;  having  taken  for  granted  that  it  did  not  deserve 
examination.* 

How  imperfect  was  his  acquaintance  with  the  secondary 
laws,  the  axioinata  media  of  association,  is  plainly  seen 
in  his  argument  against  Stewart  and  Mill  on  the  compara- 
tively insignificant  question  with  which  he  started.  The 
thesis  he  is  asserting  is,  that  "  in  place  of  ascending  up- 
"  wards,  from  the  minimum  of  perception  to  its  maxima, 
"  we  descend  from  masses  to  details." 

"  If  the  opposite  doctrine  "  (says  Sir  W.  Hamilton)! 
"  were  correct,  what  would  it  involve  ?    It  would  involve 

*  In  one  of  the  unfinislied  dissertations  left  among  his  papers,  and 
intended  for  his  edition  of  Reid  (in  which  it  now  stands  as  note  E) 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  did  attempt  to  disprove  the  doctrine  that  our  incapacity  to 
conceive  colour  without  extension  is  an  effect  of  association.  His  argu- 
ments (pp.  919,  920),  are  first,  that  of  D'Alembert  (discussed  in  a  former 
chapter),  that  when  two  colours  meet  we  must  be  conscious  of  the  line 
which  separates  them ;  and  the  junction,  therefore,  of  two  colours  cannot 
be  conceived  apart  from  extension.  But  suppose  that  we  are  only  per- 
ceiving a  single  colour,  which  occupies  the  whole  field  of  vision :  our  invari- 
ably seeing  this  as  extended  cannot  be  explained  by  something  which 
only  happens  when  we  see  two  colours ;  unless  the  impression  received 
from  the  two  adheres  to  the  one  by  association.  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
therefore,  is  reduced  to  say  that  the  field  of  vision  "  has  a  right  and  a  left, 
an  upper  and  an  under  side,  and  may  be  divided  into  halves,  quarters, 
&c.,  indefinitely,"  an  argument  which  begs  the  question,  since  it  assumes 
that  the  homogeneously  coloured  field  is  already  perceived  as  composed  of 
parts,  that  is,  as  extended. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton's  other  argument  is  that  "  we  cannot  be  conscious  of 
"  a  colour  without  being  conscious  of  that  colour  in  contrast  to,  and 
"  therefore  out  of,  another  colour, — without,  therefore,  being  couscious  of 
"  the  extended."  This  seems  an  assumption  without  grounds.  If  a 
single  colour  occupies  the  whole  field  of  vision,  it  can  surely  be  recognised 
as  colour.  The  contrast,  which  is  essential  to  consciousness,  needs  not  be 
between  one  colour  and  another :  it  may  be  between  colour  and  the  absence 
of  sensation,  or  between  colour  and  a  sensation  of  some  other  sense  I  am 
supposing  the  sensation  of  colour  to  be  intermittent ;  or  if  it  were  con- 
stant, I  admit  that  it  would  cease  to  be  felt  at  all. 

The  converse  incapacity  to  conceive  extension  without  colour,  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  deals  with  very  summarily  (p.  917),  by  saying  that  tliere  is  no 
object  of  vision,  either  actual  or  conceivable,  which  is  not  coloured.  This 
is  the  very  explanation  given  by  the  Association  theory.  All  objects  of 
vision  are  coloured,  counting  black  as  a  colour,  which  when  it  stands  in 
contrast  with  positive  colours,  we  may  legitimately  do  ;  by  the  laws  of 
Association,  therefore,  what  is  always  seen  as  coloured  is  always  conceived 
as  coloured.  In  combating,  as  he  thinks,  the  Association  theory.  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  is  obliged  to  have  recourse  to  it. 

t  Lectures,  ii.  149,  150. 


322  INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 

"as  a  primary  inference,  that,  as  we  know  the  whole 
"  through  the  parts,  we  should  know  the  parts  better 
"  than  the  whole.  Thus,  for  example,  it  is  supposed 
"  that  we  know  the  face  of  a  friend,  through  the 
"  multitude  of  perceptions  which  we  have  of  the  different 
"  points  of  which  it  is  made  up;  in  other  words,  that 
"  we  should  know  the  whole  countenance  less  vividly 
"  than  we  know  the  forehead  and  eyes,  the  nose  and 
"  mouth,  &c.,  and  that  we  should  know  each  of  these 
"  more  feebly  than  we  know  the  various  ultimate  points, 
"  in  fact,  unconscious  minima  of  perception,  which  go 
"  to  constitute  them.  According  to  the  doctrine  in 
"  question,  we  perceive  only  one  of  these  ultimate  points 
"  at  the  same  instant,  the  others  by  memory  incessantly 
"  renewed.  Now  let  us  take  the  face  out  of  perception 
"  into  memory  altogether.  Let  us  close  our  eyes,  and 
*'  let  us  represent  in  imagination  the  countenance  of  our 
"  friend.  This  we  can  do  with  the  utmost  vivacity ;  or, 
"  if  we  see  a  picture  of  it,  we  can  determine  with  a  con- 
"  sciousness  of  the  most  perfect  accuracy,  that  the  portrait 
"  is  like  or  unlike.  It  cannot,  therefore,  be  denied  that 
"  we  have  the  fullest  knowledge  of  the  face  as  a  whole, 
j*'.that  we  are  familiar  with  its  expression,  with  the 
i"  general  results  of  its  parts.  On  the  hypothesis,  then, 
I*'  of  Stewart  and  Mill,  how  accurate  should  be  our  know- 
"  ledge  of  these  parts  themselves.  But  make  the  ex- 
*'  periment.  You  will  find,  that  unless  you  have  analysed, 
"  — unless  you  have  descended  from  a  conspectus  of  the 
"  whole  face  to  a  detailed  examination  of  its  parts, — with 
"  the  most  vivid  impression  of  the  constituted  whole, 
"  you  are  almost  totally  ignorant  of  the  constituted  parts. 
"  \ou  may  probably  be  unable  to  say  what  is  the  colour 
"  of  the  eyes,  and  if  you  attempt  to  delineate  the  mouth 
"  or  nose,  you  will  inevitably  faiL  Or  look  at  the  por- 
*'  trait.  You  may  find  it  unlike,  but  unless,  as  I  said, 
"  you  have  analysed  the  countenance,  unless  you  have 
"  looked  at  it  with  the  analytic  scrutiny  of  a  painter's 
"  eye,  you  will  assuredly  be  unable  to  say  in  what  respect 
"  the  artist   has  failed, — you  will  be  unable  to  specify 


BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AND    MR.    MANSEL.       323 

"  what  constituent  he  has  altered,  though  you  are  fully 
"  conscious  of  the  faKit  and  effect  of  the  alteration.  What 
"  we  have  shown  from  this  example  may  equally  be  done 
"  from  any  other — a  house,  a  tree,  a  landscape,  a  concert 
"  of  music,  &c."* 

I  have  already  made  mention  of  a  very  important  part 
of  the  Laws  of  Association,  which  may  be  termed  the 
Laws  of  Obliviscence.  If  Sir  W.  Hamilton  had  suffi- 
ciently attended  to  those  laws,  he  never  could  have 
maintained,  that  if  we  knew  the  parts  before  the  whole, 
we  must  continue  to  know  the  parts  better  tlian  the 
whole.  It  is  one  of  the  principal  Laws  of  Obliviscence, 
that  when  a  number  of  ideas  suggest  one  another  by 
association  with  such  certainty  and  rapidity  as  to  coalesce 
together  in  a  group,  all  those  members  of  the  group 
which  remain  long  without  being  specially  attended  to, 
have  a  tendency  to  drop  out  of  consciousness  Our  con- 
sciousness of  them  becomes  more  and  more  faint  and 
evanescent,  until  no  effort  of  attention  can  recall  it  into 
distinctness,  or  at  last  recall  it  at  all.  Any  one  who 
observes  his  own  mental  operations  will  find  this  fact 
exemplified  in  every  day  of  his  life.  Now  the  law  of 
attention  is  admitted  to  be,  that  we  attend  only  to  that 
which,  either  on  its  own  or  on  some  other  account, 
interests  us.  In  consequence,  what  interests  us  only 
momentarily  we  only  attend  to  momentarily;  and  do  not 
go  on  attending  to  it,  when  that,  for  the  sake  of  which 
alone  it  interested  us,  has  been  attained.  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton would  have  found  these  several  laws  clearly  set  forth, 
and  abundantly  exemplified,  in  the  work  of  Mr.  Mill 
which  he  had  before  him.  It  is  there  shown  how  large 
a  proportion  of  all  our  states  of  feeling  pass  off  without 
having  been  attended  to,  and  in  many  cases  so  habitually 

*  Those  who  are  acquainted  with  Mr.  Bailey's  attempt  to  disprove 
Berkeley's  Theory  of  Vision,  will  be  reminded  by  this  passage  of  an. 
exactly  similar  argument  employed  by  that  able  thinker  and  writer,  to 
prove  the  intuitive  character  of  what  philosophers  almost  unanimously 
consider  as  the  acquired  perceptions  of  sight.  I  have  given  the  same 
answer  to  Mr.  Bailey  on  another  occasion,  which  I  give  to  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  here. 

Y    2 


324  INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 

that  we  become  finally  incapable  of  attending  to  thera. 
Tins  [subject  was  also  extremely  well  understood  by 
Eeid,  who,  little  as  he  had  reflected  on  the  principle  of 
Association,  was  much  better  aquainted  with  the  laws 
of  Obliviscence  tlian  his  more  recent  followers,  and  has 
excellently  ilhistrated  and  exemplified  some  of  them.* 
Araonsr  those  which  he  has  illustrated  the  most  success- 
fully,  one  is,  that  the  very  great  number  of  our  states  of 
feeling  which,  beina"  themselves  neither  painful  nor 
pleasurable,  are  important  to  us  only  as  signs  of  some- 
thing else,  and  which  by  repetition  have  come  to  do 
their  work  as  signs  with  a  rapidity  which  to  our  feelings 
is  instantaneous,  cease  altogether  to  be  attended  to ;  and 
through  that  inattention  our  consciousness  of  them 
either  ceases  altogether,  or  becomes  so  fleeting  and  in- 
distinct as  to  leave  no  reliable  trace  in  the  memory. 
This  happens,  even  when  the  impressions  which  serve 
th'e  purpose  of  signs  are  not  mere  ideas,  or  reminiscences, 
of  sensation,  but  actual  sensations.  After  reading  a 
chapter  of  a  book,  when  we  lay  down  the  volume  do  we 
remember  to  have  been  individually  conscious  of  the 
printed  letters  and  syllables  which  have  passed  before 
us  ?  Could  we  recall,  by  any  effort  of  mind,  the  visible 
aspect  presented  by  them,  unless  some  unusual  circum- 
stance has  fixed  our  attention  upon  it  during  the  perusal? 
Yet  each  of  these  letters  and  syllables  must  have  been 
present  to  us  as  a  sensation  for  at  least  a  passing  moment, 
or  the  sense  could  not  have  been  conveyed  to  us.  But 
the  sense  being  the  only  thing  in  which  we  are  interested 
— or,  in  exceptional  cases,  the  sense  and  a  few  of  the 
words  or  sentences — we  retain  no  impression  of  the 
separate  letters  and  syllables.  This  instance  is  the 
more  instructive,  inasmuch  as,  the  whole  process  taking 
place  within  our  means  of  observation,  we  know  that 
our  knowledge  begins  with  the  parts,  and  not  with  the 
whole.     We  know  that  we  perceived  and  distinguished 

*  See  his  Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind,  chap.  v.  sections  2  and  8  ; 
chap.  vi.  sects,  "l,  3,  4,  7,  8,  19  ;  Intellectual  Powers,  Essay  ii.  chaps.  16 
and  17. 


BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AND    MR.    MANSEL.       325 

letters  and  syllables  before  we  learnt  to  understand 
words  and  sentences ;  and  the  perceptions  could  not,  at 
that  time,  have  passed  unattended  to ;  on  the  contrary, 
the  effort  of  attention  of  which  those  letters  and  syllables 
must  have  been  the  object,  was  probably,  while  it  lasted, 
equal  in  intensity  to  any  which  we  have  been  called 
upon  to  exercise  in  after  life.  Were  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
argument  valid,  one  of  two  things  would  follow.  Either 
we  have  even  now,  when  we  read  in  a  book,  a  more  vivid 
consciousness  of  the  letters  and  syllables  than  of  the 
words  and  sentences,  (and  by  parity  of  reason  a  more 
vivid  consciousness  of  the  words  and  sentences  than  of 
the  general  purport  of  the  discourse) :  or  else,  we  could 
read  sentences  oli*  hand  at  first,  and  only  by  subsequent 
analysis  discovered  the  letters  and  syllables.  If  ever 
there  was  a  reductio  ad  absurdum,  this  is  one. 

The  facts  on  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  argument 
rests,  are  obviously  accounted  for  by  the  laws  which  he. 
ignores.  In  our  perceptions  of  objects,  it  is  generally 
the  wholes,  and  the  wholes  alone,  that  interest  us.  In-\ 
his  example,  that  of  a  friend's  coimtenance,  it  is  (special 
motives  apart)  only  the  friend  himself  that  we  are 
interested  about ;  we  care  about  the  features  only  as 
signs  that  it  is  our  iriend  whom  we  see,  and  not  another 
person.  Unless  therefore  the  face  commands  our  atten- 
tion by  its  beauty  or  strangeness,  or  unless  we  stamp 
the  features  on  our  memory  by  acts  of  attention  directed 
upon  them  separately, 'they  pass  before  us,  and  do  their 
work  as  signs,  with  so  little  consciousness  that  no  distinct 
trace  may  be  left  in  the  memory.  We  forget  the  details 
even  of  objects  which  we  see  every  day,  if  we  have  no 
motive  for  attending  to  the  parts  as  distinguished  from 
the  wholes,  and  have  cultivated  no  habit  of  doing  so. 
That  this  is  consistent  with  having  known  the  parts 
earlier  than  the  wholes,  is  proved  not  only  by  the  case  of 
reading,  but  by  that  of  playing  on  a  musical  instrument, 
and  a  hundred  other  familiar  instances ;  by  everything, 
in  lact,  which  we  iearn  to  do.  Wiien  the  wholes  alone 
are  interesting  to  us,  we  soon  forget  our  knowledge  of 


326  INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 


the  component  parts,  unless  we  purposely  keep  it  alive 
by  conscious  comparison  and  analysis. 

This  is  not  the  only  fallacy  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  argu- 
ment. Considered  as  a  reply  to  Mr.  Mill's  explanation 
of  the  origin  of  our  ideas  of  objects,  it  entirely  misses 
the  mark  If  the  argument  and  examples  had  proved 
their  point,  which  it  has  been  seen  that  they  do  not, 
they  would  have  proved  that  we  perceive  and  know,  to 
some  extent  or  other,  the.  object  as  a  whole,  before 
knowing  its  integrant  parts.  But  it  is  not  of  integrant 
parts  that  Mr,  Mill  was  speaking ;  and  he  might  have 
admitted  all  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  contends  for,  without 
surrendering  his  own  opinion.  The  question  does  not 
relate  to  parts  in  extension.  It  does  not  concern  Mr, 
Mill's  theory  whether  we  know,  or  do  not  know,  a  man 
as  such,  before  we  distinguish,  in  thought  or  in  perception, 
his  head  from  his  feet.  What  Mr.  Mill  said  was,  that 
jour  idea  of  an  object,  whether  it  be  of  the  man,  or  of  his 
head,  or  of  his  feet,  is  compounded  by  association  from 
our  ideas  of  the  colour,  the  shape,  the  resistance,  &c., 
which  belong  to  those  objects.  These  are  what  philoso- 
phers have  called  the  metaphysical  parts,  not  the  integrant 
part,  of  the  total  impression.  Now  I  have  never  heard 
of  any  philosopher  who  maintained  that  these  parts  were 
not  known  until  after  the  objects  which  they  characterize  ; 
that  we  perceive  the  body  first,  and  its  colour,  shape,  form, 
&c.,  only  afterwards.  Our  senses,  which  on  all  theories 
are  at  least  the  avenues  through  which  our  knowledge  of 
bodies  comes  to  us,  are  not  adapted  by  nature  to  let  in 
the  perception  of  the  whole  object  at  once.  They  only 
open  to  let  pass  single  attributes  at  a  time.  And  this  is 
as  much  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  opinion  as  any  one's  else, 
except  where  he  is  sustaining  an  argument  which  makes 
him  blind  to  it. 

As  is  often  the  case  with  our  author,  the  conclusion 
he  is  maintaining  is  worth  more  than  his  argument  to 
prove  it,  and  though  not  the  whole  truth,  has  truth  in 
it.  That  we  perceive  the  whole  before  the  parts  will  not 
stand  examination  as  a  general  law,  but  is  very  often  true 


BY    8IR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AND   MR.    MANSEL.       327 

as  a  particular  fact :  our  first  impression  is  often  that  of 
a  confused  mass,  of  which  all  the  parts  seem  blended, 
and  our  subsequent  progress  consists  in  elaborating  this 
into  distinctness.  It  was  well  to  point  out  this  fact :  but 
if  our  author  had  paid  more  attention  to  its  limits,  be 
might  have  been  able  to  give  us  a  complete  theory  of  it, 
instead  of  leaving  it,  as  he  has  done,  an  empirical 
observation,  which  waits  for  some  one  to  raise  it  into  a 
scientific  law. 

The  same  want  of  comprehension  of  the  power  of  an 
inseparable  association,  which  was  shown  by  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  in  the  case  of  Colour  and  Extension,  is  ex- 
hibited in  the  only  other  case  in  which  he  adduces  any 
argument  to  prove  that  an  idea  was  not  produced  by 
association.  The  case  is  that  of  causality,  and  the  argu- 
ment is  the  ordinary  one  of  metaphysicians  of  his  school. 
"  The  necessity*  of  so  thinking  cannot  be  derived  from  a 
"  cmtom  of  so  thinkin":.  The  force  of  custom,  influential 
"  as  it  may  be,  is  still  always  limited  to  the  customary ; 
"and  the  customary  never  reaches,  never  even  approaches 
"  to  the  necessary."  If  this  were  so,  not  only  could  an 
inseparable  association  generate  no  necessity  of  belief,  but 
there  could  be  no  such  thing  as  inseparable  association ; 
no  entirely  irresistible  conjunction  between  two  mental 
states.  The  paviour,  however,  who  cannot  use  his 
rammer  without  the  accustomed  cry,  the  orator  who  had 
so  often  while  speaking  twirled  a  string  in  his  hand 
that  he  became  unable  to  speak  when  he  accidentally 
dropped  it,  are,  it  seems  to  me,  examples  of  a 
"  customary"  which  did  approach  to,  and  even  reach, 
the  "necessary."  "Association  may  explain  a  strong 
"  and  special,  but  it  can  never  explain  a  universal  and 
"absolutely  irresistible  belief."  Not  when  the  con- 
junction of  facts  which  engenders  the  association,  is 
itself  universal  and  irresistible?  "  VVhatf  I  cannot  but 
'  •'  think,  must  be  a  priori^  or  original  to  thought :  it 
"  cannot  be  engendered  by  experience  jipon  custom."    As 

*  Discussions,  Appendix  i.  on  Causality,  p.  615. 
t  J-iectures,  ii.  lyl. 


328  INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 

if  experience,  that  is  to  say,  association,  were  not 
perpetually  engendering  both  inabilities  to  think,  and 
inabilities  not  to  think.  "  We  can*  think  away  each 
"  and  every  part  of  the  knowledge  we  have  derived 
"  I'rom  experience."  Associations  derived  from  experience 
are  doubtless  separable  by  a  sufficient  amount  of  contrary 
experience ;  but,  in  the  cases  we  are  considering,  no  con- 
trary experience  is  to  be  had.  On  the  theory  that  the 
belief  in  causality  results  from  association,  "  whenf  asso- 
"  ciation  is  recent,  the  causal  judgment  should  be  weak, 
"  and  rise  only  gradually  to  full  force,  as  custom  becomes 
"  inveterate."  And  how  do  we  know  that  it  does  not? 
The  whole  process  of  acquiring  our  belief  in  causation 
takes  place  at  an  age  of  which  we  have  no  remembrance, 
and  which  precludes  the  possibility  of  testing  the  matter 
by  experiment :  and  all  theories  agree  that  our  first  type 
of  causation  is  our  own  power  of  moving  our  limbs ; 
which  is  as  complete  as  it  can  be,  and  has  formed  as  strong 
associations  as  it  is  capable  of  forming,  long  before  the 
child  can  observe  or  communicate  its  mental  operations. 

It  is  strange  that  almost  all  the  opponents  of  the 
Association  psychology  should  found  their  main  or  sole 
argument  in  refutation  of  it  upon  the  feeling  of  neces- 
sity ;  for  if  there  be  any  one  feeling  in  our  nature  which 
the  laws  of  association  are  obviously  equal  to  producing, 
one  would  say  it  is  that.  Necessary,  according  to  Kant's 
definition,  and  there  is  none  better,  is  that  of  which  the 
negation  is  impossible.  If  i|ve  find  it  impossible,  by  any 
trial,  to  separate  two  ideas,  we  have  all  the  feeling  of 
necessity  which  the  mind  is  capable  of.  Those,  therefore, 
who  deny  that  association  can  generate  a  necessity  of 
thought,  must  be  willing  to  affirm  that  two  ideas  are 
never  so  knit  together  by  association  as  to  be  practically 
inseparable.  But  to  affirm  this  is  to  contradict  the  most 
lamiiiar  experience  of  life.  Many  persons  who  have 
been  frightened  in  childhood  can  never  be  alone  in  the 
dark  without  irrepressible  terrors.     Many  a  person  is 

*  Lectures,  iv.  74.  f  Discussions,  ut  supra. 


BY  SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AND    MR.    M ANSEL.       329 

unable  to  revisit  a  particular  place,  or  to  think  of  a  par- 
ticular event,  without  recalling  acute  feelings  of  grief  or 
reminiscences  of  suffering.  If  the  facts  which  created 
these  strong  associations  in  individual  minds,  had  been 
common  to  all  mankind  from  their  earliest  infancy,  and 
had,  when  the  associations  were  fully  formed,  been  for- 
gotten, we  should  hkve  had  a  necessity  of  Thought — 
one  of  the  necessities  which  are  supposed  to  prove  an  ob- 
jective law,  and  an  a  priori  mental  connexion  between 
ideas  *  Now,  in  all  the  supposed  natural  beliefs  and 
necessary  concep^ons  which  the  principle  of  Inseparable 
Association  is  employed  to  explain,  the  generating  causes 
of  the  association  did  begin  nearly  at  the  beginning  of 
life,  and  are  common  either  to  all,  or  to  a  very  large 
portion  of  mankind. f 

*  Dr.  Ward  (p.  291)  takes  exception  to  these  instances,  as  exemplifying 
not  a  necessity  of  thought  but  a  necessity  of  feeUng — which  has  never  been 
affirmed  to  prove  an  objective  law,  or  an  a  priori  connexion  between 
ideas.  I  answer  that  what  I  sought  to  prove  by  the  instances,  was  that 
two  ideas  may  be  ''  so  knit  together  by  association  as  to  be  practically 
inseparable."  And  I  added,  not  that  a  necessity  of  feeling  proves  a  neces- 
sity of  thought,  but  that  under  certain  conditions  it  would  generate  one. 
If  the  person  in  whose  mind  a  given  spot  is  associated  with  terrors,  had 
entirely  forgotten  the  fact  by  which  it  came  to  be  so ;  and  if  the  rest  of 
mankind,  or  even  only  a  great  number  of  them,  felt  the  same  terror  on 
coming  to  the  same  place,  and  were  equally  unable  to  account  for  it; 
there  would  certainly  grow  up  a  conviction  that  the  place  had  a  natural 
quality  of  terribleness,  which  would  probably  fix  itself  in  the  belief  that 
the  place  was  under  a  curse,  or  was  the  abode  of  some  invisible  object  of 
terror.  Peelings  common  to  many  persons,  which  are  at  once  irresistible 
and  unaccountable,  almost  always  pass  into  equivalent  judgments  and 
beliefs.  Indeed,  this  is  the  precise  way  in  which  the  fact  of  our  sensa- 
tions is  translated  into  belief  in  an  external  world  ;  and  we  should,  in  the 
case  supposed,  seem  to  have  the  same  evidence  of  the  terrific  quality, 
which  we  have  of  any  of  the  qualities  of  objects. 

t  I  find  it  necessary  here  to  correct  a  misunderstanding  to  which  I 
never  should  have  suspected  myself  to  be  liable.  Dr.  M'Cosh  employs 
nearly  the  whole  of  his  ninth  chapter  (Judgment  or  Comparison)  in  pro- 
testing against  the  doctrine,  that  an  inseparable  association  necessarily 
produces  belief;  and  concludes  with  a  solemn  appeal  to  the  young  to  raise 
themselves  above  the  influence  of  mere  association,  and  learn  "  that  it  is 
"  our  duty  to  found  our  beliefs  on  a  previous  judgment"  and  "  to  base  our 
"  beliefs  on  an  inspection  of  realities  and  actualities."  (Pp.  214,  215.)  In 
all  of  which,  aimed  as  it  is  at  myself,  Dr.  M'Cosh  is  preaching  not  only  to 
a  person  already  converted,  but  to  an  actual  missionary  of  the  same  doc- 
trine. I  have  certainly  called  attention  to  the  important  psychological 
truth,  not  unrecognised  by  Dr.  M'Cosh,  that  a  strong  mental  association 
between  two  facts,  even  short  of  inseparabiUty,  has  a  great  tendency  to 


330  INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 

The  besfgarly  account  now  exhibited,  is,  I  believe,  all 
that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  anywhere  written  against  the 
Association  psychology.  But  it  is  not  all  that  has  been 
said  against  that  psychology  from  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
point  of  view.  In  this  as  in  various  other  cases,  to 
supply  what  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  omitted,  recourse 
may  advantageously  be  had  to  Mr.  Mansel. 

Mr.  Mansel,  though  in  some  sense  a  pupil  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  is  a  pupil  who  may  be  usefuU}/  consulted  even 
after  his  master.  Besides  that  he  now  and  then  sees 
things  which  his  master  did  not  see,  he  very  often  tights 
a  better  battle  against  adversaries.  Moreover,  as  1  before 
remarked,  he  has  a  decided  taste  for  clear  statements  and 
definite  issues ;  and  this  is  no  small  advantage  when  the 
object  is,  not  victory,  but  to  understand  the  subject. 

Mr.  Mansel  joins  a  distinct  issue  with  the  Association 
psychology,  and  brings  the  question  to  the  proper  test. 
"  It  has  been  already  observed,"  he  says,  in  his  Prolego- 
mena Logica,*  "  that  whatever  truths  we  are  com- 
"  pelled  to  admit  as  everywhere  and  at  all  times  neces- 
"  sary,  must  have  their  origin,  not  without,  in  the  laws 
"  of  the  sensible  world,  but  within,  in  the  constitution 
"  of  the  mind  itself.  Sundry  attempts  have,  indeed, 
"  been  made  to  derive  them  from  sensible  experience  and 
"  constant  association  of  ideas ;  but  this  explanation  is 
"  refuted  by  a  criterion  decisive  of  the  fate  of  all  hypo- 
"  theses ;  it  does  not  account  for  the  phsenomena.  It 
"  does  not  account  for  the  fact  that  other  associations,  a^ 
"frequent  and  as  uniform,  are  incapable  of  producing  a 

make  us  believe  in  a  connexion  between  the  facts  themselves ;  bat  I  thought 
that  if  there  ever  had  been  a  writer  who  was  assiduous  in  warning  people 
against  this  tendency  (to  which,  in  my  Logic,  I  have  given  a  conspicuous 
place  in  the  enumeration  of  Fallacies)  and  exhorting  them  to  ground  their 
beliefs  exclusively  on  the  evidence,  that  writer  was  myself.  Dr.  M' Cosh's 
work  is  unimpeachable  in  point  of  candour  and  fairness;  but  this  instance 
shows  how  little  he  is  to  be  relied  on  for  correctly  apprehending  the 
maxims  and  tendencies  of  a  philosophy  different  from  his  own. 

Dr.  M'Oosh,  in  his  reply,  interprets  the  phraseology  of  this  Note  as  if  I 
had  accused  him  of  "preaching"  in  some  disparaging  sense.   1  was  merely 
alluding   to  the   almost  proverbial  expression,  "precher  un   converti," 
which  I  thought  that  Dr.  M'Cosh  would  have  understood. 
*  Beginning  of  chap.  iv.  p.  90. 


BY    SIR  WILLIAM    HAMILTON   AND    MR.    M ANSEL.       331 

"  higher  conmction  than  that  of  a  relative  and  physical 
"  necessity  only." 

This  is  coming  to  the  point,  and  evinces  a  correct  ap- 
prehension of  the  conditions  of  scientific  proof.  If  other 
associations,  as  close  and  as  habitual  as  those  existing 
in  the  cases  in  question,  do  not  produce  a  similar  feeling 
of  necessity  of  thought,  the  sufficiency  of  the  alleged  cause 
is  disproved,  and  the  theory  must  fall.  Mr.  Mansel  is 
within  the  true  conditions  of  the  Psychological  Method. 

But  what  are  these  cases  of  uniform  and  intimate 
association,  which  do  not  give  rise  to  a  feeling  of  mental 
necessity  ?  The  following  is  Mr.  Mansel's  first  example 
of  them  :*  "  I  may  imagine  the  sun  rising  and  setting 
"  as  now  for  a  hundred  years,  and  afterwards  remaining 
"  continually  fixed  in  the  meridian.  Yet  my  experiences 
"  of  the  alternations  of  day  and  night  have  been  at  least 
"  as  invariable  as  of  the  geometrical  properties  of  bodies. 
"  I  can  imagine  the  same  stone  sinking  ninety-nine  times 
"  in  the  water,  and  floating  the  hundredth,  but  my  expe- 
"  rience  invariably  repeats  the  former  phsenomenon  only." 

The  alternation  of  day  and  night  is  invariable  in  our 
experience;  but  is  the  phsenomenon  day  so  closely  linked 
in  our  experience  with  the  phsenomenon  night,  that  we 
never  perceive  the  one,  without,  at  the  same  or  the  imme- 
diately succeeding  moment,  perceiving  the  other?  That 
is  a  condition  present  in  the  inseparable  associations 
which  generate  necessities  of  thought.  Uniformities  of 
sequence  in  which  the  phsenomena  succeed  one  another 
only  at  a  certain  interval,  do  not  give  rise  to  inseparable 
associations.!     There  are  also  mental  conditions,  as  well 

*  Prolegomena  Logica,  pp.  96,  97. 
t  Mr.  Mahaffy  has  misunderstood  (p.  xxiv.)  the  meaning  of  this  state- 
ment, which  is  certainly  too  incautiously  expressed.  The  phsenomena 
which  must  have  been  simultaneous  or  immediately  successive  to  create 
an  inseparable  association,  need  not  have  been  actual  perceptions  :  an 
association,  and  even  an  inseparable  association,  may  be  created  between 
two  ideas,  if  they  have  been  habitually  present  together,  or  in  immediate 
succession,  merely  in  thought.  This  truth  is  so  universally  recognised  by 
writers  on  Association,  that  it  did  not  seem  to  require  statement.  But 
the  succession  which  generates  an  inseparable  association,  must,  either  in 
fact  or  in  thought,  be  an  immediate  succession;  or  rather,  one  without  aaiy 
conscious  or  perceptible  interval. 


832  INSEPARABLE   ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 

as  physical,  which  are  required  to  create  such  an  associa- 
tion. Let  us  take  Mr.  Mansel's  other  instance,  a  stone 
sinking  in  the  water.  We  have  never  seen  it  float,  yet 
we  have  no  difficulty  in  conceiving  it  floating.  But,  in 
the  first  place,  we  have  not  been  seeing  stones  sinking 
in  water  from  the  first  dawn  of  consciousness,  and  in 
nearly  every  subsequent  moment  of  our  lives,  as  we  have 
been  seeing  two  and  two  making  four,  intersecting 
straight  lines  diverging  instead  of  enclosing  a  space, 
causes  followed  by  eflfects  and  effects  preceded  by  causes. 
But  there  is  a  still  more  radical  distinction  than  this. 
No  frequency  of  conjunction  between  two  phaenomena 
will  create  an  inseparable  association,  if  counter-associa- 
tions are  being  created  all  the  while.  If  we  sometimes 
saw  stones  floating  as  well  as  sinking,  however  often  we 
might  have  seen  them  sink,  nobody  supposes  that  we 
should  have  formed  an  inseparable  association  between 
them  and  sinking.  We  have  not  seen  a  stone  float,  but 
we  are  in  the  constant  habit  of  seeing  either  stones  or 
other  things  which  have  the  same  tendency  to  sink,  re- 
maining in  a  position  which  they  would  otherwise  quit, 
being  maintained  in  it  bj^  an  unseen  force.  The  sinking 
of  a  stone  is  but  a  case  of  gravitation,  and  we  are  abun- 
dantly accustomed  to  see  the  force  of  gravity  counteracted. 
Every  fact  of  that  nature  which  we  ever  saw  or  heard  of, 
is  pro  tnnto  an  obstacle  to  the  formation  of  the  inseparable 
association  which  would  make  a  violation  of  the  law  of 
gravity  inconceivable  to  us.  Resemblance  is  a  principle 
of  association,  as  well  as  contiguity:  and  however  contra- 
dictory a  supposition  may  be  to  our  experience  in  hdc 
materia,  if  our  experience  in  alia  materiel  furnishes  us 
with  types  even  distantly  resembling  what  the  supposed 
phsenomenon  would  be  if  realized,  the  associations  thus 
formed  will  generally  prevent  the  specific  association 
from  becoming  so  intense  and  irresistible,  as  to  disable 
our  imaginative  faculty  from  embodying  the  supposition 
in  a  form  moulded  on  one  or  other  of  those  types.* 

*  In  an  able  manuscript  critique  on  "the  Experience  Hypothesis"  which 
has  been  communicated  to  me,  the  familiar  truth  that  hre  burns  is  given 


BY    SIR    WILLIAM   HAMILTON    AND    MR.    M ANSEL.       333 

Again,  says  Mr.  Mansel,*  "  experience  has  uniformly 
"  presented  to  me  a  horse's  body  in  conjunction  with  a 
"  horse's  head,  and  a  man's  head  with  a  man's  body ; 
"just  as  experience  has  uniformly  presented  to  me  space 
"  inclosed  within  a  pair  of  curved  lines  and  not  within 
"  a  pair  of  straight  lines :"  yet  I  have  no  difficulty  in 
imagining  a  centaur,  but  cannot  imagine  a  space 
inclosed  by  two  straight  lines.  "  Why  do  I,  in  the 
"  former  case,  consider  the  results  of  my  experience  as 
"  contingent  only  and   transgressible,  confined  to  the 

as  an  example  of  an  uniform  sequence  which  does  not  generate  a  necessity 
of  thought.  No  one  (the  writer  observes)  will  say  that  we  have  a  more 
frequent  perception  of  the  fact  that  parallel  lines  do  not  inclose  a  space, 
than  we  have  of  the  fact  that  fire  burns  :  yet  we  can  without  difficulty 
imagine  human  beings  remaining  unburnt  in  a  fiery  furnace  ;  nay,  we  may 
even  believe  it,  if  we  admit  the  supposition  either  of  magic  or  of  a  miracle. 
No  doubt :  but  this  is  fully  explained  by  the  counter-associations.  Though 
we  have  never  seen  a  human  being  in  the  fire  unburnt,  being  in  the  fire  is 
not  inseparably  associated  with  destruction,  for  we  have  seen  abundance 
of  other  objects,  immersed  in  intense  fire,  yet  resisting  its  action.  The 
conception  of  a  man  in  the  same  position,  is  within  the  limits  of  the  power 
characteristic  of  imagination,  of  varying  (only  slightly  in  this  instance) 
our  mental  combinations  of  the  elements  given  by  experience.  The  writer 
asks,  why  then  cannot  imagination  produce  all  combinations?  The  only 
ones  it  cannot  produce  are  precisely  those  which  are  prevented  by  asso- 
ciations really  irresistible,  associations  that  have  never  been  counteracted 
by  counter-associations,  and  by  the  operation  of  which,  elements  with 
which  certain  combinations  in  imagination  would  be  incompatible,  are 
forced  into  our  mental  representations. 

The  same  writer  says,  we  believe  by  a  necessity  of  thought  that  a  tan- 
gent touches  a  circle  at  one  point  only,  yet  this  necessary  belief,  far  from 
being  the  result  of  unitorm  experience,  is  contradicted  by  uniform  expe- 
rience, since  the  tangents  and  circles  of  experience  touch  one  another  at 
more  than  one  point — coalesce  in  an  appreciable  portion  of  their  extent. 
I  answer,  that  the  circle  in  our  imagination  is  copied  from  those  only, 
among  the  circles  of  our  experience,  in  which  sense  can  detect  no  variation 
from  the  definition  of  a  circle,  i.e.  whose  radii  are  not  perceptibly  unequal. 
Now,  if  the  radii  are,  to  our  perception,  equal,  a  line  which  is  to  our  per- 
ception straight,  will  touch  the  circle  in  what  is  to  our  perception  a  single 
point.  And  there  are  many  such  circles,  not  perhaps  in  nature,  but  cer- 
tainly in  the  products  of  mechanical  art.  The  belief  therefore  does  not 
conflict,  but  accords,  with  an  uniform  experience.  And  even  on  the  con- 
trary snpposition — even  if  there  were  no  circles  in  experience  but  sach  as 
are  appreciably  difiierent  from  the  geometrical  ideal,  our  senses  would  no 
less  inform  us  that  in  the  degree  in  which  a  visible  circle  and  straight  line 
approximate  to  the  definitions,  the  extent  of  their  contact  with  one 
another  approximates  to  a  point :  which,  by  the  principles  of  Induction, 
makes  the  ultimate  truth  as  much  a  trntk  of  experience,  as  if  it  were 
directly  cognised  by  the  sen^ies. 

*  Prolegomena  Logica,  pp.  99, 100. 


334  INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 

"  actual  phgenomena  of  a  limited  field,  and  possessinpf 
"  no  value  beyond  it;  while  in  the  latter  I  am  compelled 
"  to  regard  them  as  necessary  and  universal  ?  Why  can 
"  I  give  in  imagination  to  a  quadruped  body  what  expe- 
"  rience  assures  me  is  possessed  by  bipeds  only?  And 
"  why  can  I  not,  in  like  manner,  invest  straight  lines 
"  with  an  attribute  which  experience  has  uniformly  pre- 
**  sented  in  curves?" 

I  answer: — Because  our  experience  furnishes  us  with 
a  thousand  models  on  which  to  frame  the  conception  of 
a  centaur,  and  with  none  on  which  to  frame  that  of  two 
straight  lines  enclosing  a  space.  Nature,  as  known  in 
our  experience,  is  uniform  in  its  laws,  but  extremely 
varied  in  its  combinations.  The  combination  of  a  horse's 
body  with  a  human  head  has  nothing,  prima  facie,  to 
make  any  wide  distinction  between  it  and  any  of  the 
numberless  varieties  which  we  find  in  animated  nature. 
To  a  common,  even  if  not  to  a  scientific  mind,  it  is  within 
the  limits  of  the  variations  in  our  experience.  Every 
similar  variation  which  we  have  seen  or  heard  of,  is  a 
help  towards  conceiving  this  particular  one ;  and  tends 
to  form  an  association,  not  of  fixity  but  of  variability, 
which  frustrates  the  formation  of  an  inseparable  associa- 
tion between  a  human  head  and  a  human  body  exclusively. 
AVe  know  of  so  many  diflferent  heads,  united  to  so  many 
different  bodies,  that  we  hav^e  little  difficulty  in  imagining 
any  head  in  combination  with  any  body.  Nay,  the 
mere  mobility  or  objects  in  space  is  a  fact  so  universal  in 
our  experience,  that  we  easily  conceive  any  object  what- 
ever occupying  the  place  of  any  other;  we  imagine 
without  difficulty  a  horse  with  his  head  removed,  and  a 
human  head  put  in  its  place.  But  w^hat  model  does  our 
experience  afford  on  which  to  frame,  or  what  elements 
from  which  to  construct,  the  conception  of  two  straight 
lines  enclosing  a  space  ?  There  are  no  counter  associa- 
tions in  that  case,  and  consequently  the  primary  associa- 
tion, being  founded  on  an  experience  beginning  from 
birth,  and  never  for  many  minutes  intermitted  in  our 
waking   hours,   easily  becomes   inseparable.     Had   but 


BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AND    MR.    MANSEL.       335 

experience  afforded  a  case  of  persistent  illusion,  in  which 
two  straii^ht  lines  after  intersecting  had  appeared  again 
to  approach,  the  counter  association  formed  might  have 
been  sufficient  to  render  such  a  supposition  imaginable, 
and  defeat  the  supposed  necessity  of  thought.  In  the 
case  cf  parallel  lines,  the  laws  of  perspective  do  present 
such  an  illusion  :  they  do,  to  the  eye,  appear  to  meet  in 
both  directions,  and  consequently  to  inclose  a  space  :  and  • 
by  supposing  that  we  had  no  access  to  the  evidence 
which  proves  that  they  do  not  really  meet,  an  ingenious 
thinker,  whom  I  formerly  quoted,  was  able  to  give  the 
idea  of  a  constitution  of  nature  in  which  all  mankind 
might  have  believed  that  two  straight  lines  could  inclose 
a  space.  That  we  are  unable  to  believe  or  imagine  it  in 
our  present  circumstances,  needs  no  other  explanation 
than  the  laws  of  association  afford  :  for  the  case  unites 
all  the  elements  of  the  closest,  intensest,  and  most  inse- 
parable association,  with  the  greatest  freedom  from  con- 
flicting counter-associations  which  can  be  found  within 
the  conditions  of  human  life.''^ 

In  all  the  instances  of  phsenomena  invariably  conjoined 
w^hich  fail  to  create  necessities  of  thought,  I  am  satisfied 
it  would  be  found  that  the  case  is  wanting  in  some  of 
the  conditions  required  by  the  Association  psychology, 
as  essential  to  the  formation  of  an  association  really 

*  Mr.  Mahaffy  says  that  I  need  not  li3,ve  gone  beyond  our  present  world 
for  illusions  which,  according  to  my  doctrine,  oiight  to  have  made  it  pos- 
sible to  conceive  something  that  is  contradictory  to  a  mathematical  axiom : 
and  proceeds  to  mention  illusions  the  illusory  character  of  which  is  at  once 
seen,  from  the  immediate  accessibility  of  the  evidence  which  disproves 
them  ;  double  vision,  and  the  apparent  crookedness  of  a  stick  in  the  water 
(p.  xxvii).  As  a  protection  against  future  irrelevances  of  this  kind,  I  have 
inserted  in  the  text  the  word  "  persistent "  before  "  illusion."  Mr.  Mahaffy 
argues  as  if  the  illusions  in  our  experience  never  got  corrected  by  contrary 
experience,  but  would  permanently  deceive  us  unless  overridden  by  an 
a  priori  conviction.  "Every  child,"  he  says,  "who  looks  down  a  long 
"  street,  sees  two  paralled  right  lines  converging,  and  we  very  rarely  pro- 
"  ceed  to  verify  or  question  the  result.  .  .  .  Most  assuredly  no  child  has 
"  verified  for  himself  that  the  very  long  parallel  lines  which  he  has  met, 
"  and  sees  to  be  equidistant,  as  far  as  he  can  easily  judge,  and  which  he 
"  sees  do  not  change  their  direction  suddenly — that  these  parallel  lines  do 
"  not  meet."  Does  a  child,  then,  never  walk  down  a  street  ?  or  does  Mr. 
Mahaffy  think  it  necessary  to  the  child's  enlightenment  that  he  should 
walk  down  every  street  ? 


336  INSEPARABLE    ASSOCIATION    IGNORED 

inseparable.  It  is  the  more  to  be  wondered  at  tliat  Mr. 
Mansel  should  not  have  perceived  the  easy  answ^er  which 
could  be  given  to  his  argument,  since  he  himself  comes 
very  near  to  giving  the  sauie  explanation  of  many  impos- 
sibilities of  thought,  which  is  given  by  the  Association 
theory,  "  We  can  only,"  he  says,"^  "  conceive  in  thought 
what  we  have  experienced  in  presentation ;"  and  no 
other  reason  is  necessary  for  our  being  unable  to  conceive 
a  thing,  than  that  we  have  never  experienced  it.  He 
even  holds  that  the  stock  example  of  a  necessity  of 
thought,  the  belief  in  the  uniformity  of  the  course  of 
nature,  can  be  accounted  for  by  experience,  without  any 
objective  necessity  at  all.  "  We  cannot  conceive,"  he 
says,f  "a  course  of  nature  without  uniform  succession, 
"  as  we  cannot  conceive  a  being  who  sees  without  e3'es 
"  or  hears  without  ears  ;  because  we  cannot,  under  exist- 
"  ing  circumstances,  experience  the  necessary  intuition. 
"  But  such  things  may  nevertheless  exist  j  and  under 
"  other  circumstances,  they  might  become  objects  of 
"  possible  conception,  the  laws  of  the  process  of  concep- 
"  tion  remaining  unaltered."  I  am  aware  that  when 
Mr.  Mansel  uses  the  words  Presentation  and  Intuition, 
he  does  not  mean  exclusively  presentation  by  the  senses. 
Nevertheless,  if  he  had  only  written  the  preceding  pas- 
sage, no  one  would  have  suspected  that  he  could  have 
required  any  other  cause  for  our  inability  to  conceive  a 
bilineal  figure,  than  the  impossibility  of  our  perceiving 
one.  It  is  sufficient,  in  his  opinion,;];  to  constitute  any 
propositions  necessary,  that  "  while  our  constitution  and 
"  circumstances  remain  as  they  are,  we  cannot  but  think 
"  them."  It  is  superabundantly  manifest  that  many 
propositions  which  all  admit  to  be  grounded  only  on 
experience,  are  necessary  under  this  definition.  Mr. 
Mansel  even  as>erts  a  more  complete  dependence  of  our 
possibiliiies  of  thouglit  upon  our  opportunities  of  experi- 
ence than  there  appears  to  me  to  be  ground  for  :  since 
he  affirms  that  "  we  can  only  conceive  in  thought  what 

*  Prolegomena  Logica,  p.  1 12. 
t  Ibid.  p.  149.  I  Ibid.  p.  160. 


Br    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON    AND    MR.    MANSEL.       337 

we  have  experienced  in  presentation,"  while  in  reality 
it  is  sufficient  that  we  should  have  experienced  in  pre- 
sentation things  bearing  some  similarity  to  it. 

NOTE  TO  THE  PRECEDING  CHAPTER. 

Dr.  Ward,  one  of  the  ablest  living  defenders  of  the  intuitional  meta- 
physics, has,  in  the  Dublin  Beview  for  October  1871,  made  a  vigorous 
attack  npon  the  doctrines  of  this  chapter.  His  arguments  in  part 
coincide  (though  with  a  difference  in  the  illustrations)  with  those  alreadv 
noticed,  of  Mr.  Mansel :  several  of  them,  however,  are  distinct :  and  as  I 
believe  that  in  answering  them,  I  am  answering  the  best  that  is  likely  to 
be  said  by  any  future  champion,  1  will  take  up  Dr.  Ward's  points  one 
by  one 

Dr.  Ward  thus  expresses  the  test  of  necessary  truth :  "  If  in  any  case  I 
"  know  by  my  very  conception  of  some  ens,  that  a  certain  attribute,  not 
"  included  in  that  conception,  is  truly  predicable  of  that  ens,  such  predica- 
"  tion  is  a  self-evidently  necessary  proposition.  Take,  for  instance,  the 
"  axiom  that  all  trilateral  figures  are  triangular.  If,  by  my  very  concep- 
"  tion  of  a  trilateral  figure,  I  know  its  triangularity  .  .  .  then  I  know 
*'  infallibly  that  a  trilateral  non-triangular  figure  is  an  intrinsically  repug- 
"  nant  chimera ;  that  in  no  possible  region  of  existence  could  such  a  figure 
"be  found;  that  not  even  an  Omnipotent  Being  could  form  one." 
Consequently  "the  triangularity  of  all  trilateral  figures  is  cognizable  as 
"  a  self-evidently  necessary  truth;"  not  grounded  on,  nor  deriving  its 
evidence  from,  experience. 

It  is  not  de;iied,  nor  deniable,  that  there  are  properties  of  things  which 
we  know  to  be  true  (as  Dr.  Ward  expresses  it)  by  our  "  very  conception  " 
of  the  thing.  But  this  is  no  argument  against  our  knowing  them  solely  by 
experience,  for  (as  is  truly  and  aptly  said  by  Professor  Bain  in  his  Logic) 
these  are  cases  in  which  in  the  very  process  of  forming  the  conception,  we 
have  experience  of  the  fact.  It  is  not  likely  that  Dr.  Ward  has  returned 
to  the  notion  (so  long  abandoned  and  even  forgotten  by  intuitionists)  of 
ideas  literally  innate,  and  thinks  that  we  bring  with  us  into  the  world  the 
conception  of  a  trilateral  figure  ready  made.  He  doubtless  believes  that 
it  is  at  least  suggested  by  observation  of  objects.  Now,  the  fact  of  three 
sides  and  that  of  three  angles  are  so  intimately  linked  together  in  external 
nature,  that  it  is  impossible  for  the  conception  of  a  three-sided  figure  to 
get  into  the  mind  without  carrying  into  the  mind  with  it  the  conception 
of  three  angles.  Therefore,  when  we  have  once  got  the  conception  of  a 
trilateral,  we  have  no  need  of  further  experience  to  prove  triangularity. 
The  Cvinception  itself,  which  represents  all  our  previous  experience,  suffices. 
And  if  the  Association  theory  be  true,  it  must  follow  from  it,  that  when- 
ever any  property  of  external  things  is  in  the  relation  to  the  things  which 
is  required  for  the  formation  of  an  inseparable  association,  that  property 
will  get  into  the  conception,  and  be  believed  without  further  proof.  Dr. 
Ward  will  say  that  triangularity  is  not  included  in  the  conception  of  a 
trilateral.  But  this  is  only  true  in  the  sense  that  triangularity  is  not  in 
the  connotation  of  the  name.  Many  attributes  not  included  in  the  defi- 
tion  are  included  in  the  conception.  Dr.  Ward  cannot  but  see  that  on  the 
experience  hypothesis,  this  not  only  may,  but  must  be  the  case.* 

*  The  belief,  however,  when  grounded  on  the  conception  without  a  fresh 

Z 


338  NOTE    TO    THE    PRECEDING    CHAPTER. 

Dr.  Ward  goes  on  to  deny  that  aniformity  of  experience  can  produce 
tlie  belief  that  the  truth  thus  uniformly  experienced  is  necessary.  If  it 
could,  he  says,  the  fact  itself  of  the  uniformity  of  nature- — the  fact  that 
phaenomena  succeed  each  other  according  to  uniform  laws — resting  on  a 
broader  basis  of  experience  than  any  particular  law  of  nature,  has  all  the 
conditions  for  being  regarded  as  a  necessary  truth,  and  must  produce  "  a 
"  practical  necessity  of  fancying  that  in  every  possible  region  of  existence 
"  phenomena  succeed  each  other  by  uniform  laws  ;"*  now,  we  are  under  no 
such  necessity,  as  I  myself  have  strenuously  maintained.  But  my  answer 
to  Mr.  Mansel's  instances  is  applicable  to  this  of  Dr.  Ward's.  Is  it 
seriously  that  he  compares  our  experience  of  the  uniformity  of  nature,  in 
point  of  obviousness  and  familiarity,  with  our  experience  of  the  straight- 
ness  of  straight  lines  ?  The  uniformity  is,  in  the  first  stages  of  our 
experience,  an  actual  paradox ;  first  appearances  are  against  it ;  they 
seem  to  show  that  some  events  do  indeed  succeed  each  other  with  an. 
approach,  though  only  an  approach,  to  uniformity,  but  that  a  far  greater 
number  have  no  fixed  order  whatever.  How  can  it  be  maintained  that 
we  have,  at  that  early  period  of  our  observations,  such  experience  of  this 
universal  truth,  as  to  incorporate  it  in  our  conception  of  every  object  in 
nature,  and  create  an  irresistible  association  of  uniformity  of  sequence 
with  all  possible  events  ?  As  we  gradually  learn  the  correct  interpretation 
of  our  experience,  and  become  aware  that  uniformity  of  sequence  is  an 
universal  truth,  a  powerful,  though  even  then,  not  an  irresistible  asso- 
ciation, does  grow  up  ;  accordingly  the  law  that  whatever  begins  to  exist 
has  a  cause,  is  classed  by  most  of  the  intuitional  philosophers  as  a  neces- 
sary truth,  though  (strange  to  say)  a  necessary  truth  with  an  exception. 

But  Dr.  Wardf  contends  (Dr.  M'Cosh  had  already  said  the  same 
thing);J;  that  there  is  a  fallacy  of  ambiguity  in  the  phrase  "  necessity  of 
thought."  He  charges  me  with  using  the  phrase  "in  two  senses  funda- 
"  mentally  different.  A  necessity  of  thought  may,  no  doubt,  be  most 
'■  intelligibly  understood  to  mean  a  law  of  nature  whereby  under  certain 
'■  circumstances  I  necessarily  think  this,  that,  and  the  other  judgment. 
"  But  it  may  also  be  understood  to  mean  a  law  of  nature  whereby  I  think 
"  as  necessary  this,  that,  and  the  other  judgment."  He  agrees  with  me 
"  that  from  a  necessity  of  thought  in  the  former  sense,  no  legitimate 
"  argument  whatever  can  be  deduced  for  a  necessity  of  objective  truth. 
"  Supposing  I  felt  unusually  cold  a  few  moments  ago,  it  is  a  necessity 
"  of  thought  that  I  should  now  remember  the  circumstance.  Yet  that 
"  past  experience  was  no  necessary  truth.     It  is  a  necessity  of  thought 


appeal  to  experience — when  got  at,  as  Dr.  Ward  expresses  it,  not  by  ob- 
servation of  external  nature,  but  of  our  own  mind — is  only  justified 
exactly  so  far  as  we  are  entitled  to  assume  that  the  conception  in  our 
mind  represents  the  facts  of  outward  experience.  Only  if  space  itself  is 
everywhere  what  we  conceive  it  to  be,  can  our  conclusions  from  the  con- 
ception be  everywhere  objectively  true.  The  truths  of  geometry  are  valid 
wherever  the  constitution  of  space  agrees  with  what  it  is  within  our 
means  of  observation.  That  space  cannot  anywhere  be  differently  con- 
stituted, or  that  almighty  power  could  not  make  a  different  constitution 
of  it,  we  know  not.  This  may  serve  as  an  answer  to  some  other  remarks 
of  Dr.  Ward  (pp.  301  to  303),  to  which  it  would  tax  the  reader's  patience 
too  much  to  give  a  fuller  reply. 

*  P.  290. 
t  P.  292.    I  Examination  of  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill's  Philosophy  (pp.  43,  44.) 


NOTE    TO    THE   PRECEDING    CHAPTER.  339 

"  again  that  I  expect  the  sun  to  rise  to-morrow :  and  many  similar 
"  instances  could  be  adduced.  The  only  necessity  of  thought  which  proves 
"  the  self-evident  necessity  of  objective  truth,  is  the  necessity  of  thinking 
"  that  such  truth  is  self-evidently  necessary." 

Not  denying  the  validity  of  this  distinction,  I  maintain  that  it  does  not 
affect  the  argument ;  because  the  one  necessity  is  always  proved  by  the 
other.  The  evidence  always  given,  and  the  only  evidence  which  I  believe 
can  be  given,  that  we  must  think  anything  as  necessary,  is  that  we 
necessarily  think  it.  This,  under  various  names,  a  Fundamental  Law  of 
Belief,  the  Inconceivability  of  the  Opposite,  and  so  on,  is  the  staple  of  the 
Intuitionist  argument.  Surely,  if  I  disprove  the  necessity  of  thinking  the 
thing  at  all,  I  disprove  that  it  must  be  thought  as  necessary.  What 
other  proof  can  be  given  of  the  necessity  of  a  truth,  I  confess  myself 
ignorant.  The  consensus  of  mankind  will  not  do,  since  that  is  disproved 
by  being  disputed;  and  Dr.  Ward's  argument,  that  a  truth  must  be 
independent  of  experience  if  it  can  be  deduced  from  the  conception,  has 
been  met  by  showing  that  it  is  deduced  from  the  conception  only  after 
experience  has  put  it  there. 

Dr.  Ward  says*  that  "  mere  constant  and  uniform  experience  cannot 
"  possibly  account  for  the  mind's  conviction  of  self-evident  necessity." 
Nor  do  I  pretend  that  it  does.  The  experience  must  not  only  be  constant 
and  uniform,  but  the  juxtaposition  of  the  facts  in  experience  must  be 
immediate  and  close,  as  well  as  early,  familiar,  and  so  free  from  even  the 
semblance  of  an  exception  that  no  counter  association  can  possibly  arise. 
l)r.  Ward  gives  two  contrasted  examples :  "  I  have  never  even  once 
"  experienced  the  equality  of  2  +  9  to  3  +  8,  and  yet  am  convinced  that 
"  not  even  Omnipoteuce  could  overthrow  that  equality.  I  have  most 
"  habitually  experienced  the  warmth-giving  property  of  fire,  and  yet  see 
"  no  reason  for  doubting  that  Omnipotence  can  at  any  time  suspend  or 
"  remove  that  property.  That  which  I  have  tiever  experienced  I  regard 
"  as  necessary  ;  that  which  I  have  habitually  and  unexceptionably  expe- 
"  rienced  I  regard  as  contingent." 

To  the  first  example  I  answer,  that  if  the  equality  of  2  +  9and3  +  8 
does  not  come  to  us  in  the  first  instance  by  direct  experience  (though  fully 
ratified  by  it),  neither  does  it  come  by  direct  intuition.  It  is  gained  by  a 
succession  of  steps,  each  resting  on  actual  trial.  True,  it  may  be  but  a 
mental  trial;  as  by  merely  fancying  myself  "holding  two  pebbles  in  one 
"  hand  and  nine  in  the  other,  and  then  transferring  one  pebble  from  the 
"  larger  to  the  smaller  group."  But  the  mere  imagination  of  this  transfer 
would  not,  and  ought  not  to  carry  conviction  to  me,  if  I  had  not  previously 
observed  that  change  of  place  makes  no  difference  in  the  number  of  objects. 
All  reasoning  from  conceptions  is  open  to,  and  finally  rests  upon,  an  appeal 
to  the  sensations.  With  respect  to  the  warmth-giving  property  of  fire, 
the  instance  is  not  happily  chosen  ;  for  warmth  is  so  much  the  differentia 
of  fire,  the  principal  connotation  of  the  word,  that  what  was  believed  not 
to  warm  would  certainly  not  be  called  fire.  But  (disregarding  this)  Dr. 
Ward's  illustration  may  be  met  in  the  same  manner  in  which  I  have  met 
the  similar  illustrations  of  Mr.  Mansel.  Fire,  it  is  true,  will  always,  under 
certain  needful  conditions,  give  warmth  ;  but  the  sight  of  fire  is  very 
often  unattended  with  any  sensation  of  warmth.  It  is  not  concomitance 
of  the  outward  facts  that  creates  the  association,  but  concomitance  of  the 
sensible  impressions.     The  visible  presence  of  fire  and  the  sensation  of 


*  Pp.  298,  299. 

z  2 


340  NOTE  TO  THE   PRECEDING   CHAPTER. 

warmth  are  not  in  that  invarible  conjunction  and  immediate  juxtaposition, 
which  might  disable  us  from  conceiving  the  one  without  the  other,  and 
might  therefore  lead  ns  to  suppose  their  conjunction  to  be  a  necessary 
truth. 

Dr.  Ward's  criticisms  on  the  view  I  take  of  the  Law  of  Causation  belong 
not  to  the  present  work,  but  to  my  System  of  Logic.  One  more  of  his 
objections,  however,  may  be  noticed  here.  He  says,*  that  while  I  account 
for  the  "  power  of  ascertaining  axioms  by  mere  mental  experience"  from 
"  one  of  the  characteristic  properties  of  geometrical  forms,"  viz.,  that  they 
can  be  painted  in  the  imagination  with  a  distinctness  equal  to  reality,  I 
entirely  leave  out  of  account  arithmetical  and  algebraic  axioms,  though 
these,  equally  with  geometrical,  can  be  arrived  at  by  merely  mental 
experimentation.  I  do  not  leave  them  out  of  account,  but  have  assigned, 
in  my  Logic,  another  and  equally  conclusive  reason  why  they  can  be 
studied  in  our  conceptions  alone,  namely,  that  arithmetical  and  algebraic 
truths  being  true  not  of  any  particular  kind  of  things,  but  of  all  things 
whatever,  any  mental  conceptions  whatever  will  adequately  represent 
them. 

*  P.  302. 


341 


CHAPTER  XV. 


SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON  S    DOCTRINE   OF    UNCONSCIOUS 
MENTAL  MODIFICATIONS. 

The  laws  of  Obliviscence  noticed  in  the  preceding 
chapter,  are  closely  connected  with  a  question  raised  by 
Sir  W.  Hamilton,  and  discussed  at  some  length  in  his 
Lectures  :  Whether  there  are  unconscious  states  of 
mind :  or,  as  he  expresses  it  in  the  eighteenth  Lecture, 
*'  Whether  the  mind  exerts  energies,  and  is  the  subject 
"  of  modifications,  of  neither  of  which  it  is  conscious." 
Our  author  pronounces  decidedly  for  the  affirmative,  in 
opposition  to  most  English  philosophers,  by  whom,  he 
says,  "  the  supposition  of  an  unconscious  action  or  passion 
"  of  the  mind,  has  been  treated  as  something  either 
"  unintelligible  or  absurd ;"  and  in  opposition,  no  less, 
to  at  least  one  expression  of  opinion  by  our  author 
himself*  This  is  one  of  the  numerous  inconsistencies 
in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  professed  opinions,  which  a  close 
examination  and  comparison  of  his  speculations  brings 
to  light,  and  which  show  how  far  he  was  in  reality 
from  being  the  systematic  thinker  which,  on  a  first 
impression  of  his  writings,  he  seems  to  be.  In  one 
point  of  view,  these  self-contradictions  are  fully  as 
much  an  honour  as  a  discredit  to  him ;  since  they 
frequently  arise  from  his  having  acutely  seized  some 
important  psychological  truth,  greatly  in  advance  of  his 
general  mode  of  thought,  and  not  having  brought  the 

•  "  Every  act  of  mind  is  an  act  of  consciousness"  (Lectures,  ii.  277). 
Another  statement  to  the  same  effect  which  I  erroneously  quoted  in  former 
editions  (Lectures,  ii.  73)  does  not  belong  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton. 


342  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  doctrine  of 

remainder  of  his  philosophy  up  to  it.  Instead  of  having 
reasoned  out  a  consistent  scheme  of  thought,  of  which 
every  part  fits  in  with  the  other  parts,  he  seems  to  have 
explored  the  deeper  regions  of  the  mind  only  at  the 
points  which  had.  some  direct  connexion  with  the  con- 
clusions he  had  adopted  on  a  few  special  questions  of 
philosophy:  and  from  his  different  explorations  he 
occasionally,  as  in  the  present  case,  brought  back 
different  results.  But,  in  the  place  where  he  treats 
directly  of  this  particular  question,  he  decides  unequi- 
vocally for  the  existence  of  latent  mental  modifications. 
The  subject  is  in  itself  not  unimportant,  and  his 
treatment  of  it  will  serve  as  an  example  by  which  to 
estimate  his  powers  of  thought  in  the  province  of  pure 
jDsychology. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  recognises  three  different  kinds,  or, 
as  he  calls  them,  degrees,  of  mental  latency.  Two  of 
these  will  be  seen,  on  examination,  to  be  entirely 
irrelevant. 

The  first  kind  of  latency,  is  that  which  belongs  to  all 
the  parts  of  our  knowledge  which  we  are  not  thinking 
of  at  the  very  moment.  "  I  know  a  science  of  lan- 
"  guage,  not  merely  while  I  make  a  temporary  use  of  it, 
"  but  inasmuch  as  I  can  apply  it  when  and  how  I  will. 
"  Thus  the  infinitely  greater  part  of  our  spiritual  treasures 
"  lies  always  beyond  the  sphere  of  consciousness,  hid  in 
"  the  obscure  recesses  of  the  mind.""^  But  this  stored- 
up  knowledge,  I  submit,  is  not  an  "  unconscious  action 
or  passion  of  the  mind. "  It  is  not  a  mental  state,  but  a 
capability  of  being  put  into  a  mental  state.  When  I  am 
not  thinking  of  a  thing,  it  is  not  present  to  my  mind  at  all. 
It  may  become  present  when  something  happens  to  recall 
it;  but  it  is  not  latently  present  now;  no  more  than  any 
physical  thing  which  I  may  have  hoarded  up.  I  may 
have  a  stock  of  food  with  which  to  nourish  myself  here- 
after ;  but  my  body  is  not  in  a  state  of  latent  nourish- 
ment by  the  food  which  is  in  store.     I  have  the  power 

*  Lectures,  i.  339. 


UNCONSCIOUS    MENTAL    MODIFICATIONS.  343 

to  walk  across  the  room,  though  I  am  sitting^  in  my 
chair ;  but  we  should  hardly  call  this  power  a  latent  act 
of  walking.  What  required  to  be  shown  was,  not  that 
I  may  possess  knowledge  without  recalling  it,  but  that 
it  can  be  recalled  to  my  mind,  I  remaining  unconscious 
of  it  all  the  time.* 

"  Thef  second  degree  of  latency  exists  when  the  mind 
"  contains  systems  of  knowledge,  or  certain  habits  of 


*  Sir  W.  Hamilton  deliberately  rejects  this  obvious  distinction,  and  in 
his  Lecture  on  Memory  (Lect.  xxx.)  maintains  that  all  J;he  knowledge 
we  possess,  whether  we  are  thinking  of  it  or  not,  is  at  all  times  present  to 
us,  though  unconsciously.  "  This  is  certainly,"  (he  says)  "  an  hypothesis, 
"  because  whatever  is  out  of  consciousness  can  only  be  assumed ;  but  it 
"  is  an  hypothesis  which  we  are  not  only  warranted,  but  necessitated  by 
"  the  phaenomena,  to  establish."  (Lectures,  ii.  209.)  This  confident  asser- 
tion is  supported  only  by  a  passage  from  an  author  of  whom  the  reader 
has  already  heard  something,  H.  Schmid  (Versuch  einer  Metaphysik) ;  by 
whom,  however,  the  conclusion  is  not  elicited  from  "  the  phaenomena,"  but 
drawn,  d  priori,  from  the  assertion  that  the  act  of  knowledge  is  "  an  energy 
"  of  the  self-acting  powers  of  a  subject  one  and  indivisible ;  consequently 
"  a  part  of  the  ego  must  be  detached  or  annihilated  if  a  cognition  once 
"  existent  be  again  extinguished."  This  palpable  begging  of  the  whole 
point  in  dispute  (which  Schmid  makes  no  scruple  of  propping  up  by  half- 
a-dozen  other  arbitrary  assumptions)  of  course  makes  it  necessary  to  ex 
plain  how  anything  can  be  forgotten;  which  Schmid  resolves  by  declaring 
that  nothing  ever  is ;  it  merely  passes  into  latency.  Of  all  this,  not  a 
shadow  of  evidence  is  exhibited ;  anything  being  set  down  as  fact,  which 
can  be  educed  from  the  idea  of  the  Ego  evolved  by  Schmid  out  of  the 
depths  of  his  moral  consciousness.  His  style  of  philosophizing  may  be 
judged  from  the  following  specimen  :  "  Every  mental  activity  belongs  to 
"the  one  vital  activity  of  mind  in  general;  it  is,  therefore,  indivisibly 
"  bound  up  with  it,  and  can  be  neither  torn  from,  nor  abolished  in  it." 
Therefore  he  has  only  to  call  every  impression  in  memory  a  "  mental  acti- 
vity "  to  prove  that  when  we  have  once  had  it,  we  can  never  more  get 
rid  of  it.  If  he  had  but  happened  to  call  it  a  mental  act,  it  would  have 
been  all  over  with  his  argument ;  for  there  may  surely  be  passing  acts  of 
one  permanent  activity.  Schmid  further  argues,  from  the  same  premises, 
that  feehngs,  volitions,  and  desires,  are  retained  in  the  mind  without  the 
medium  of  memory,  that  is,  we  retain  the  states  themselves,  not  the  no- 
tions or  remembrances  of  them  :  from  which  it  follows,  that  1  am  at  this 
moment  desiring  and  wilUng  to  rise  from  my  bed  yesterday  morning,  and 
every  previous  morning  since  I  began  to  have  a  will.  Schmid  has  an  easy 
answer  to  all  attempts  at  explaining  mental  phaenomena  by  physiological 
hypotheses,  viz.,  that  "  Mind,  howbeit  conditioned  by  bodily  relations,  still 
ever  preserves  its  self-activity  and  independence."  As  if  to  determine 
whether  it  does  so  or  not,  was  not  the  very  point  in  dispute  between  him 
and  the  physiological  hypotheses.  These  reasonings  are  quite  worthy  of 
Schmid ;  but  it  is  extremely  unworthy  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  to  accept  and 
endorse  them. 

t  Lectures,  i.  339-346. 


344  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  doctrine  of 

"  action,  which  it  is  wholly  unconscious  of  possessing"  in 
"  its  ordinary  state,  but  which  are  revealed  to  conscious- 
"  ness  in  certain  extraordinary  exaltations  of  its  powers. 
"  The  evidence  on  this  point  shows  that  the  mind  fre- 
"  quently  contains  the  whole  systems  of  knowledge,  which, 
"  though  in  our  normal  state  they  have  faded  into  abso- 
■"  lute  oblivion,  may,  in  certain  abnormal  states,  as  mad- 
"  ness,  febrile  delirium,  somnambulism,  catalepsy,  &c., 
"  flash  out  into  luminous  consciousness,  and  even  throw 
"  into  the  shade  of  unconsciousness  those  other  systems 
"  by  which  they  had,  for  a  long  period,  been  eclipsed 
"  and  even  extinguished."  He  then  cites  from  various 
authors  some  of  the  curious  recorded  cases  "  in  which 
"  the  extinct  memory  of  whole  languages  was  suddenly 
"  restored,  and,  what  is  even  still  more  remarkable,  in 
"  which  the  faculty  was  exhibited  of  actually  repeating, 
"  in  known  or  unknown  tongues,  passages  which  were 
"  never  within  the  grasp  of  conscious  memory  in  the 
"  normal  state."  These,  however,  are  not  cases  of  latent 
states  of  mind,  but  of  a  very  different  thing — of  latent 
memory.  It  is  not  the  mental  impressions  that  are 
latent,  but  the  power  of  reproducing  them.  Every  one 
admits,  without  any  apparatus  of  proof,  that  we  may 
have  powers  and  susceptibilities  of  which  we  are  not 
conscious ;  but  these  are  capabilities  of  being  affected, 
not  actual  affections.  I  have  the  susceptibility  of  being 
poisoned  by  prussic  acid,  but  this  susceptibility  is  not, 
a  present  phsenomenon,  constantly  taking  place  in 
my  body  without  my  perceiving  it.  The  capability  of 
being  poisoned  is  not  a  present  modification  of  my 
body ;  nor  is  the  capability  I  perhaps  have  of  recollect- 
ing, should  I  become  delirious,  something  which  I  have 
forgotten  while  sane,  a  present  modification  of  my 
mind.  These  are  future  contingent  states,  not  present 
actual  ones.  The  real  question  is,  can  I  undergo  a 
present  actual  mental  modificalion  without  being  aware 
of  it? 

We  come,  therefore,  to  the  third  case,  which  is  the 
only  one  really  in  po;nt,  and  enquire,  whether  there  are. 


UNCONSCIOUS    MENTAL    MODTFICATIONS.  345 

in  our  ordinary  mental  life,  "  mental*  modifications,  i.e. 
"  mental  activities  and  passivities,  of  which  we  are  un- 
"  conscious,  but  which  manifest  their  existence  by  effects 
"  of  which  we  are  conscious  ?"  Sir  W.  Hamilton  decides 
that  there  are  :  and  even  "  that  what  we  are  conscious  of 
**  is  constructed  out  of  what  we  are  not  conscious  of;" 
.that  "  the  sphere  of  our  conscious  modifications  is  only 
'"  a  small  circle  in  the  centre  of  a  far  wider  sphere  of 
**  action  and  passion,  of  which  we  are  only  conscious 
"  through  its  effects."  ^     -   - 

His  first  example  is  taken  from  the  perception  of  ex-  '^^'^''vv 
ternal  objects.  The  facts  which  he  adduces  are  these.  "^ 
1st.  Every  minimum  visibile  is  composed  of  still  smaller 
parts,  which  are  not  separately  capable  of  being  objects 
of  vision ;  "  they  are,  severally  and  apart,  to  conscious- 
"  ness  as  zero."  Yet  every  one  of  these  parts  "must  by 
*'  itself  have  produced  in  us  a  certain  modification,  real 
"  though  unperceived,"  since  the  effect  of  the  whole  can 
only  be  the  sum  of  the  separate  efiects  of  the  parts. 
2nd.  "  When  we  look  at  a  distant  forest,  we  perceive  a 
"  certain  expanse  of  green.  Of  this. as  an  affection  of 
"  our  organism,  we  are  clearly  and  distinctly  conscious. 
"  Now,  the  expanse  of  which  we  are  conscious  is  evidently 
*'  made  up  of  parts  of  which  we  are  not  conscious.  No  leaf, 
"  perhaps  no  tree,  may  be  separately  visible.  But  the 
*'  greenness  of  the  forest  is  made  up  of  the  greenness  of 
"  the  leaves  ;  that  is,  the  total  impression  of  which  we  are 
"  conscious,  is  made  up  of  an  infinitude  of  small  impres- 
"  sions  of  which  we  are  not  conscious.  8rd.  Our  sense  of 
hearing  tells  the  same  tale.  There  is  a  minimum  audibile ; 
the  faintest  sound  capable  of  being  heard.  This  sound, 
however,  must  be  made  up  of  parts,  each  of  which  must 
affect  us  in  some  manner,  otherwise  the  whole  which 
they  compose  could  not  affect  us.  When  we  hear  the 
distant  murmur  of  the  sea,  "this  murmur  is  a  sum 
"  made  up  of  parts,  and  the  sum  would  be  as  zero  if  the 
"  parts  did  not  count  as  something  ....  If  the  noise 
**  of  each  wave  made  no  impression  on  our  sense,  the 

*  Lectures,  i.  347-349. 


346  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  doctrine  of 

"  noise  of  the  sea,  as  the  result  of  these  impressions, 
"  could  not  be  realized.  But  the  noise  of  each  several 
"  wave,  at  the  distance  we  suppose,  is  inaudible ;  we 
"  must,  however,  admit  that  they  produce  a  certain 
"  modification  beyond  consciousness,  on  the  percipient 
"  subject ;  for  this  is  necessarily  involved  in  the  reality 
"  of  their  result."^ 

It  is  a  curious  question  how  Sir  W.  Hamilton  failed 
to  perceive  that  an  unauthorized  assumption  has  slipped 
into  his  argument.  Because  the  minimum  visibile  con- 
sists of  parts  (as  we  know  through  the  miscroscope),  and 
because  the  minimum  visibile  produces  an  impression  on 
our  sense  of  sight,  he  jumps  to  the  conclusion  that  each 
one  of  the  parts  does  so  too.  But  it  is  a  supposition 
consistent  with  what  we  know  of  nature,  that  a  certain 
quantity  of  the  cause  may  be  a  necessary  condition  to  the 
production  of  any  of  the  effect.  The  minimum  visibile 
would  on  that  supposition  he  this  certain  quantity;  and 
the  two  halves  into  which  we  can  conceive  it  divided, 
though  each  contributing  its  half  to  the  formation  of 
that  which  produces  vision,  would  not  each  separately 
produce  half  of  the  vision,  the  concurrence  of  both  being 
necessary  to  produce  any  vision  whatever.  And  so  of  the 
distant  murmur  of  the  sea :  the  agency  which  produces 
it  is  made  up  of  the  rolling  of  many  different  waves, 
each  of  uhich,  if  sufficiently  near,  would  afiect  us  with 
a  perceptible  sound;  but  at  the  distance  at  which  tliey 
are,  it  may  require  the  rolling  of  many  waves  to  excite 
an  amount  of  vibration  in  the  air  sufficient,  when  en- 
feebled by  extension,  to  produce  any  efiect  whatever  on 
our  auditory  nerves,  and,  through  them,  on  our  mind. 
The  supposition  that  each  wave  affects  the  mind  sepa- 
rately because  their  aggregate  afiects  it,  is  therelbre,  to 
say  the  least,  an  unproved  hypothesis. 

The  counter-hypothesis,  that  in  order  to  the  production 

of  any  quantity  whatever  of  the  effect,  there  is  needed 

a  certain  minimum  quantity  of  the  cause,  it  is  the  more 

extraordinary  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  should  have  over. 

*  Lectures,  i.  349-351. 


UNCONSCIOUS   MENTAL    MODIFICATIONS.  347 

looked,  since  he  has  not  only  himself  adopted  a  similar 
supposition  in  some  other  cases,*  but  it  is  a  necessary 
part  of  his  theory  in  this  very  case.  He  will  not  admit 
as  possible,  that  less  than  a  certain  quantity  of  the  ex- 
ternal a<jent,  produces  no  mental  modification;  but  he 
himself  supposes  that  less  than  a  certain  quantity  of 
mental  modification  produces  no  consciousness.  Yet  if 
his  a  priori  argument  is  valid  for  the  one  sequence,  it  is 
vaHd  for  the  other.  If  the  effect  of  a  whole  must  be 
the  sum  of  similar  effects  produced  by  all  its  parts,  and 
if  every  state  of  consciousness  is  the  effect  of  a  modifi- 
cation of  mind  which  is  made  up  of  an  infinitude  of 
small  parts,  the  state  of  consciousness  also  must  be  made 
up  of  an  infinitude  of  small  states  of  consciousness, 
produced  by  these  infinitely  small  mental  modifications 
respectively.  We  are  not  at  liberty  to  adopt  the  one 
theory  for  the  first  link  in  the  double  succession,  and  the 
other  theory  for  the  other  link.  Having  sliown  no  reason 
why  either  theory  should  be  preferred,  our  author  would 
have  acted  more  philosophically  in  not  deciding  between 
them.  But  to  accommodate  half  the  fact  to  one  theory 
and  half  to  the  other,  without  assigning  any  reason  for 
the  difi'erence,  is  to  exceed  all  rational  license  of  scientific 
hypothesis. 

After  these  examples  from  Perception,  our  author 
passes  to  cases  of  Association :  and  as  he  here  states  some 
important  mental  phaenomeua  well  and  clearly,  I  shall 
quote  him  at  some  length. f 

"  It  sometimes  happens,  that  we  find  one  thought 
"  rising  immediately  after  another  in  consciousness,  but 
"  whose  consecution  we  can  reduce  to  no  law  of  associa- 
"  tion.  Now  in  these  cases  we  can  generally  discover 
"  by  an  attentive  observation,  that  these  two  thoughts, 

*  "  In  the  internal  perception  of  a  series  of  mental  operations,  a  certain 
"  time,  a  certain  duration,  is  necessary  for  the  smallest  section  of  conti- 
"  nuous  energy  to  which  consciousness  is  competent.  Some  minimum  of 
"  time  must  be  admitted  as  the  condition  of  consciousness."  (Lectures,  i. 
369.)  And  again  (Lectures,  ii.  102) :  "  It  cannot  certainly  be  said,  that 
"  the  minimum  of  sensation  infers  the  maximum  of  perception  ;  for  per- 
*'  ception  always  supposes  a  certain  quantum  of  sensatioa."  ^ 

t  Lectures,  i,  352,  353. 


348  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  doctrine  of 

"  thougli  not  themselves  associated,  are  each  associated 
"  with  certain  other  thoughts ;  so  that  the  whole  conse- 
"  cution  would  have  been  regular,  had  these  intermediate 
"  thoughts  come  into  consciousness,  between  the  two 
"  which  are  not  immediately  associated.  Suppose,  for 
"  instance,  that  A,  B,  C,  are  three  thoughts, — that  A 
"  and  C  cannot  immediately  suggest  each  other,  but 
"  that  each  is  associated  with  B,  so  that  A  will  naturally 
"  suggest  B,  and  B  naturally  suggest  C.  Now  it  may 
"  happen,  that  we  are  conscious  of  A,  and  immediately 
"  thereafter  of  C.  How  is  the  anomaly  to  be  explained  ? 
"  It  can  only  be  explained  on  the  principle  of  latent 
"modifications.  A  suggests  C,  not  immediately,  but 
"  through  B ;  but  as  B,  like  the  half  of  the  minimum 
"  visibile  or  minimum  audibile,  does  not  rise  into  con- 
**  sciousness,  we  are  apt  to  consider  it  as  non-existent. 
"  You  are  probably  aware  of  the  following  I'act  in 
"  mechanics.  If  a  number  of  billiard  balls  be  placed  in  a 
"  straight  row  and  touching  each  other,  and  if  a  ball 
"  be  made  to  strike  in  the  line  of  the  row,  the  ball  at 
"one  end  of  the  series,  what  will  happen?  The  motion 
"  of  the  impinging  ball  is  not  divided  among  the  whole 
"row  ;  this,  which  we  might  a  priori  have  expected,  does 
"  not  happen,  but  the  impetus  is  transmitted  through 
"  the  intermediate  balls  which  remain  each  in  its  place  to 
*'  the  ball  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  series,  and  this  ball 
;"  alone  is  impelled  on.  Something  like  this  seems  often 
^^  to  occur  in  the  train  of  thought.  One  idea  immediately 
j"  suggests  another  into  consciousness — the  suggestion 
!"  passing  through  one  or  more  ideas  which  do  not  them- 
"  selves  rise  into  consciousness.  The  awakening  and 
"  awakened  ideas  here  correspond  to  the  ball  striking 
"  and  the  ball  struck  off;  while  the  intermediate  ideas 
"  of  which  we  are  unconscious,  but  which  carry  on  the 
"  suggestion,  resemble  the  intermediate  balls  which  re- 
"  main  moveless,  but  communicate  the  impulse.  An 
"  instance  of  this  occurs  to  me  with  which  I  was  recently 
"  struck.  Thinking  of  Ben  Lomond,  this  thought  was 
"  immediately  followed  by  the  thought  of  the  Prussian 


UNCONSCIOUS    MENTAL    MODIFICATIONS.  349 

"  system  of  education.  Now  conceivable  connexion  be- 
"  tween  these  two  ideas  in  themselves,  there  was  none. 
"  A  little  reflection,  however,  explained  the  anomaly. 
"  On  my  last  visit  to  the  mountain,  I  had  met  upon  its 
"  summit  a  German  gentleman,  and  though  I  had  no 
"  consciousness  of  the  intermediate  and  unawakened 
"  links  between  Ben  Lomond  and  the  Prussian  schools, 
"  they  were  undoubtedly  these, — the  German, — Ger- 
"  many,  Prussia, — and,  these  media  being  admitted,  the 
*-*  connexion  between  the  extremes  was  manifest." 

Though  our  author  says  that  the  facts  here  described   i  \iJ^ 
can  only  be  explained  on  the  supposition  that  the  inter-       ,  (^ 
vening  ideas  never  came  into  consciousness  at  all,  he  is    i  '^ 
aware  that  another  explanation  is   conceivable,  namely    JO-'^ 
that  they  were  momentarily  in  consciousness,  but  were    j  .,  ^ 
forgotten,  agreeably  to  the  law  of  Obliviscence.  already    j'' 
spoken  of:  which,  in  fact,  is  the  explanation  given  by 
Stewart.     The  same  two  explanations  may  be  given  of 
his  final  example,  drawn  from  a  class  of  phaenomena  also 
governed  by  laws  of  association,  "  our  acquired  dexterities 
and   habits."*     When  we  learn   any  manual  operation, 
suppose  that  of  playing  on  the  pianoforte,  the  operation 
is  at  first  a  series  of  conscious  volitions,  followed  by 
movements  of  the  fingers  :  but  when,  by  sufficient  repe- 
tition, a  certain  facility  has  been  acquired,  the  motions 
take  place  without  our  being  able  to  recognise  afterwards 
that  we  have  been  conscious  of  the  volitions  which  pre- 
ceded them.     In  this  case,  we  may  either  hold  with  Sir 
W.  Hamilton,  that  the  volitions  (to  which  must  be  added 
the  feelings  of  muscular  contraction,  and  of  the  contact 
of  our  fingers  with  the  keys)  are  not,  in  the  practised 
performer,    present   to    consciousness   at   all ;    or,  with 
Stewart,  that  he  is  conscious  of  them,  but  for  so  brief  an 
interval,  that  he  has  no   remembrance   of  them  after- 
wards.    The  motions,  in  this  case,  are  said  by  Hartley 
to  have  become  secondarily  automatic,  which  our  author 
supposes  to  be  a  third  opinion,  but   the  difference,  if 

•  Lectures,  iii.  355. 


350  siK  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  doctrine  of 

difference  it  was,  between  this  and  Stewart's  theory,  is 
not  material  to  the  present  enquiry. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  reasons  given  by  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  for  preferring  his  explanation  to  Stewart's. 
The  first  and  principal  of  them  is,  that  to  suppose  a  state 
of  consciousness  which  is  not  remembered,*  "violates 
"  the  whole  analogy  of  consciousness."  "  Consciousness 
"  supposes  memory  ;  and  we  are  only  conscious  as  we  are 
"  able  to  connect  and  contrast  one  instance  of  our  intel- 
"  lectual  existence  with  another."  "  Of  consciousness, 
"  however  faint,  there  must  be  some  memory,  however 
"  short.  But  this  is  at  variance  with  the  phsenomenon, 
"  for  the  ideas  of  A  and  C  may  precede  and  follow  each 
"  other  without  any  perceptible  interval,  and  without 
"  any  the  feeblest  memory  of  B." 

Here  again  I  am  obliged,  not  without  wonder,  to 
point  out  the  inconclusive  character  of  the  argument. 
When  Sir  W.  Hamilton  says  that  consciousness  implies 
memory,  he  means,  as  his  words  show,  that  we  are 
only  conscious  by  means  of  change  ;  by  discriminating 
the  present  state  from  a  state  immediately  preceding. 
Grranting  this,  as  with  proper  explanations  I  do,  all  it 
proves  is,  that  an}'-  conscious  state  of  mind  must  be  re- 
membered long  enough  to  be  compared  with  the  mental 
state  immediately  following  it.  The  state  of  mind, 
therefore,  which  he  supposes  to  have  been  latent,  must,  if 
it  passed  into  consciousness,  have  been  remembered  until 
one  other  mental  modification  had  supervened ;  which 
there  is  assuredly  not  a  particle  of  evidence  that  it  was 
not :  for  our  having  totally  forgotten  it  a  minute  after,  is 
no  evidence,  but  a  common  consequence  of  the  laws  of 
Obliviscence.  It  is  perhaps  true  that  all  consciousness 
must  be  followed  by  a  memory,  but  I  see  no  reason  why 
an  evanescent  state  of  consciousness  must  be  followed,  if 
by  any,  by  a  more  than  evanescent  memory.  "  It  is  a 
"  law  of  mind,"  our  author  says  further  on,f  "that  the 
"  intensity  of  the  present  consciousness  determines  the 

•  Lectures,  i.  354,  356.  f  Lectures,  i.  368,  369. 


UNCONSCIOrS    MENTAL    MODIFICATIONS.  351 

**  vivacity  of  the  future  memory.  Vivid  consciousness, 
"  long  memory ;  faint  consciousness,  short  memory." 
Well,  then:  in  the  case  supposed,  the  intensity  of  consci- 
ousness is  at  a  minimum,  therefore  on  his  own  showing 
the  duration  of  memory  should  be  so  too.  If  the  con- 
sciousness itself  is  too  fleeting  to  fix  the  attention,  so,  a 
fortiori,  must  the  remembrance  of  it.  In  reality,  the  re- 
membrance is  often  evanescent  when  the  consciousness  is 
by  no  means  so,  but  is  so  distinct  and  prolonged  as  to  be 
in  no  danger  whatever  of  being  supposed  latent.  Take 
the  case  of  a  player  on  the  pianoforte  while  still  a 
learner,  and  before  the  succession  of  volitions  has  at- 
tained the  rapidity  which  practice  ultimately  gives  it.  In  \ 
this  stage  of  progress  there  is,  beyond  all  doubt,  a  con- 
scious volition,  anterior  to  the  playing  of  each  particu- 
lar note.  Yet  has  tlie  player,  when  the  piece  is  finished, 
the  smallest  remembrance  of  each  of  these  volitions,  as 
a  separate  fact?  In  like  manner,  have  we,  when  we 
have  finished  reading  a  volume,  the  smallest  memory  of 
our  successive  volitions  to  turn  the  pages  ?  On  the  con- 
trary, we  only  know  that  we  must  have  turned  them,  be- 
cause, without  doing  so,  we  could  not  have  read  to  the 
end.  Yet  these  volitions  were  not  latent :  every  time 
we  turned  over  a  leaf,  we  must  have  formed  a  conscious 
purpose  of  turning ;  but,  the  purpose  having  been  in- 
stantly fulfilled,  the  attention  was  arrested  in  the  pro- 
cess for  too  short  a  time  to  leave  a  more  than  momen- 
tary remembrance  of  it.  The  sensations  of  sight,  touch, 
and  the  muscles,  felt  in  turning  *the  leaves,  were  as  vivid 
at  the  moment  as  any  of  our  ordinary  sensible  impres- 
sions which  are  only  important  to  us  as  means  to  an  end. 
But  because  they  had  no  pleasurable  or  painful  interest 
in  themselves ;  because  the  interest  they  had  as  means 
passed  away  in  the  same  instant  by  the  attainment  of 
the  end  ;  and  because  there  was  nothing  to  associate  the 
act  of  reading  with  these  particular  sensations,  rather 
than  with  other  similar  sensations  formerly  experienced  ; 
their  trace  in  the  memory  was  only  momentary,  unless 
something  unusual  and  remarkable  connected  with  the 


352  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  doctrine  of 

particular  leaves  turned  over,  detained  them  in  remem- 
brance. 

If  sensations  which  are  evidently  in  consciousness 
may  leave  so  brief  a  memory  that  they  are  not  felt  to 
leave  any  memory  whatever,  what  wonder  that  the  same 
should  happen  when  the  sensations  are  of  so  fugitive 
a  character,  that  it  can  be  debated  whether  they  were  in 
consciousness  at  all?  However  true  it  may  be  that 
there  must  be  some  memory  wherever  there  is  consci- 
ousness, what  argument  is  this  against  a  theory  which 
supposes  a  low  degree  of  consciousness,  attended  by  just 
the  degree  of  memory  which  properly  belongs  to  it  ? 

Imagine  an  argument  in  physics,  corresponding  to 
this  in  metaphysics.  Some  of  my  readers  are  probably 
acquainted  with  the  important  experiments  of  M, 
Pasteur,  which  appear  to  have  finally  exploded  the  ancient 
hypothesis  of  Equivocal  Gleneration,  by  showing  that 
even  the  smallest  microscopic  animalcules  are  not  pro- 
duced in  a  medium  from  which  their  still  more  micro- 
scopic germs  have  been  effectually  excluded.  What 
should  we  think  of  any  one  who  deemed  it  a  refutation 
of  M.  Pasteur,  that  the  germs  are  not  discernible  by  the 
naked  eye?  who  maintained  that  invisible  animalcules 
must  proceed,  if  from  germs  at  all,  from  visible  germs  ? 
This  reasoning  would  be  an  exact  parallel  to  that  of  Sir 
W.  Hamilton. 

The  only  other  argument  of  our  author  against 
Stewart's  doctrine,  is  confined  to  the  phaenoraenon  of 
acquired  habits,  in  which  case,  he  says,*  the  supposition 
of  real  but  forgotten  consciousness  "  would  constrain 
our  assent  to  the  most  monstrous  conclusions :"  since, 
in  reading  aloud,  if  the  matter  be  uninteresting,  we  may 
be  carrying  on  a  train  of  thought  (even  of  "  serious 
meditation")  on  a  totally  different  subject,  and  this,  too, 
"  without  distraction  or  fatigue :"  which,  he  says,  would 
be  impossible,  if  we  were  separately  conscious  of,  or  (as  he 
rather  gratuitously  alters  the  idea),  separately  attentive 
to,  ''  each  least  movement  in  either  process."  Sir  W. 
*  Lectures,  i.  360. 


UNCONSCIOUS   MENTAL    MODIFICATIONS.  353 

Hamilton  here  loses  sii^lit  of  a  part  of  his  own  philoso- 
phy, which  deserves  his  forgetfulness  the  less  as  it  is  a 
very  valuable  part.  In  one  of  the  most  important 
psychological  discussions  in  his  Lectures,*  he  forcibly 
maintains  that  we  are  capable  of  carrying  on  several 
distinct  series  of  states  of  consciousness  at  once ;  and 
goes  so  far  as  to  contend  not  only  that  our  consciousness, 
but  what  is  more  than  consciousness,  our  *'  concentrated 
consciousness,  or  attention,"  is  capable  of  being  divided 
among  as  many  as  six  simultaneous  impressions. f  Re- 
turning to  the  same  subject  in  another  place,  he  quotes 
from  a  modern  French  philosopher,  Carda iliac  (in  a  work 
entitled  Etudes  Elementaires  de  Philosophie),  an  excellent 
and  conclusive  passage,  showing  the  great  multitude  of 
states  more  or  less  conscious,  which  often  coexist  in  the 
mind,  and  help  to  determine  the  subsequent  trains  of 
thoujjht  or  feelincr ;  and  illustrating:  the  causes  that 
determine  which  of  these  shall  in  any  particular  case 
predominate  over  the  rest.j  Our  consciousness,  there- 
fore, according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  ought  not  to  have 
much  difficulty  in  finding  room  for  the  two  simultaneous 
series  of  states  which  he  quarrels  with  Stewart's  hypo- 
thesis for  requiring:  and  we  are  not  bound,  under  the 
penalty  of  "  monstrous  conclusions,"  to  consider  one 
of  these  series  as  latent.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  indeed 
says^  truly,  that  "  the  greater  the  number  of  objects  to 
"  which  our  consciousness  is  simultaneously  extended,  the 
*'  smaller  is  the  intensity  with  which  it  is  able  to  con- 

*  Lectures,  i.  238-25i.  f  Ibid.  p.  254. 

X  Lectures,  ii.  250-258.  From  this  long  exposition  I  shall  only  extract 
a  single  passage  (p.  258),  but  I  recommend  the  whole  of  it  to  the  attentive 
consideration  of  readers. 

"  Thus,  if  we  appreciate  correctly  the  phaenomena  of  Reproduction  or 
"  Reminiscence,  we  shall  recognise,  as  an  incontestable  fact,  that  our 
"  thoughts  suggest  each  other  not  one  by  one  successively,  as  the  order  to 
"  which  language  is  restricted  might  lead  us  to  infer  ;  but  that  the  com- 
"  plement  of  circumstances  under  which  we  at  every  moment  exist, 
"  awaken  simultaneously  a  great  number  of  thoughts ;  these  it  calls  into 
"  the  presence  of  the  mind,  either  to  place  them  at  our  disposal,  if  we  find 
"  it  requisite  to  employ  them,  or  to  make  them  co-operate  in  our  delibe- 
"  rations,  by  giving  them,  according  to  our  nature  and  our  habits,  an 
*'  influence,  more  or  less  active,  on  our  judgments  and  consequent  acts." 
§  Lectures,  i.  237. 
A  A 


354  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  doctrine  of 

"  sider  each ;"  but  the  intensity  of  consciousness  neces- 
sary for  reading  aloul  with  correctness  in  a  language 
familiar  to  us,  not  being  very  considerable,  a  great 
part  of  our  power  of  attention  is  disposable  for  "  the 
train  of  serious  meditation"  which  is  supposed  to  be 
passing  through  our  minds  at  the  same  time.  For  all 
this,  I  would  not  advise  any  person  (unless  one  with  the 
peculiar  gift  ascribed  to  Julius  Csesar)  to  stake  any- 
thing on  the  substantial  value  of  a  train  of  thought 
carried  on  by  him  while  reading  aloud  a  book  on  an- 
other subject.  Such  thoughts,  I  imagine,  are  always 
the  better  for  being  revised  when  the  mind  has  nothing 
else  to  do  than  to  consider  them. 

It  is  strange,  but  characteristic,  that  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton cannot  be  depended  on  for  remembering,  in  one  part 
of  his  speculations,  the  best  things. which  he  has  said  in 
another  ;  not  even  the  truths  into  which  he  has  thrown 
so  much  of  the  powers  of  his  mind,  as  to  have  made 
them,  in  an  especial  manner,  his  own. 

Notwithstanding  the  failure  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  to 
adduce  a  single  valid  reason  for  preferring  his  hypothesis 
to  that  of  Stewart,  it  does  not  follow  that  he  is  not,  at 
least  in  certain  cases,  in  the  right.  The  difference  be- 
tween the  two  opinions  being  beyond  the  reach  of  expe- 
riment, and  both  being  equally  consistent  with  the  facts 
which  present  themselves  spontaneously,  it  is  not  easy 
to  obtain  sure  grounds  for  deciding  between  them.  The 
essential  part  of  the  phsenomenon  is,  that  we  have,  or 
once  had,  many  sensations,  and  that  many  ideas  do,  or 
once  did,  enter  into  our  trains  of  thought,  which  sensa- 
tions and  ideas  we  afterwards,  in  the  words  of  James 
Mill,  are  "  under  an  acquired  incapacity  of  attending 
to  :"*  and  that  when  our  incapacity  of  attending  to  them 
has  become  complete,  it  is,  to  our  subsequent  conscious- 
ness, exactly  as  if  we  did  not  have  them  at  all :  we  are 
incapable,  by  any  self-examination,  of  being  aware  of 
them.  We  know  that  these  lost  sensations  and  ideas, 
for  lost  they  appear  to  be,  leave  traces  of  having  existed  ; 

*  Analysis  of  tlie  Human  Mind,  i.  33. 


UNCONSCIOUS    MENTAL    MODIFICATIONS.  355 

they  continue  to  be  openitive  in  introducing  other  ideas 
by  association.  Either,  therefore,  they  have  been  con- 
sciously present  long  enough  to  call  up  associations,  but 
not  long  enough  to  be  remembered  a  few  moments  later; 
or  they  have  been,  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  supposes,  un- 
consciously present ;  or  they  have  not  been  present  at 
all,  but  something  instead  of  them,  capable  of  producing 
the  same  effects.  I  am  myself  inclined  to  agree  with 
Sir  W.  Hamilton,  and  to  admit  his  unconscious  mental 
modifications,  in  the  only  shape  in  which  I  can  attach 
any  very  distinct  meaning  to  them,  namely,  unconscious 
modifications  of  the  nerves.  There  are  much  stronger 
facts  in  support  of  this  hypothesis  than  those  to  which 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  appeals — facts  which  it  is  far  more 
difficult  to  reconcile  with  the  doctrine  that  the  sensations 
are  felt,  but  felt  too  momentarily  to  leave  a  recognisable 
impression  in  memory.  In  the  case,  for  instance,  of  a 
soldier  who  receives  a  wound  in  battle,  but  in  the  excite- 
ment of  the  moment  is  not  aware  of  the  fact,  it  is  diffi- 
cult not  to  believe  that  if  the  wound  had  been  accom- 
panied by  the  usual  sensation,  so  vivid  a  feeling  would 
have  forced  itself  to  be  attended  to  and  remembered. 
The  supposition  which  seems  most  probable  is,  that  the 
nerves  of  the  particular  part  were  affected  as  they  would 
have  been  by  the  same  cause  in  any  other  circumstances, 
but  that,  the  nervous  centres  being  intensely  occupied 
with  other  impressions,  the  affection  of  the  local  nerves 
did  not  reach  them,  and  no  sensation  was  excited.  In 
like  manner,  if  we  admit  (what  physiology  is  rendering 
more  and  more  probable)  that  our  mental  feelings,  as  well 
as  our  sensations,  have  for  their  physical  antecedent  par- 
ticular states  of  the  nerves;  it  may  well  be  believed  that 
the  apparently  suppressed  links  in  a  chain  of  association, 
those  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  considers  as  latent,  really 
are  so ;  that  they  are  not,  even  momentarily,  felt ;  the 
chain  of  causation  being  continued  only  physically,  by  one 
organic  state  of"  the  nerves  succeeding  another  so  rapidly 
that  the  state  of  mental  consciousness  appropriate  to 
each  is  not  produced.     We  have  only  to  suppose,  either 

AA  2 


(  I)  356^      SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  doctrine  of 

that  a  nervous  modification  of  too  short  duration  does  not 
produce  any  sensation  or  mental  feeling  at  all,  or  that 
the  rapid  succession  of  different  nervous  modifications 
makes  the  feelings  produced  by  them  interfere  with  each 
other,  and  become  confounded  in  one  mass.  The 
former  of  these  suppositions  is  extremely  probable,  while 
of  the  truth  of  the  latter  we  have  positive  proof.  An 
example  of  it  is  the  experiment  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
quoted  from  Mr.  Mill,  and  which  had  been  noticed  be- 
fore either  of  them  by  Hartley.  It  is  known  that  the 
seven  prismatic  colours,  combined  in  certain  proportions, 
produce  the  white  light  of  the  solar  ray.  Now,  if  the 
seven  colours  are  painted  on  spaces  bearing  the  same 
proportion  to  one  another  as  in  the  solar  spectrum,  and 
the  coloured  surface  so  produced  is  passed  rapidly  before 
the  eyes,  as  by  the  turning  of  a  wheel,  the  whole  is  seen 
as  white.  The  physiological  explanation  of  this  phse- 
nomenon  may  be  deduced  from  another  common  experi- 
ment. If  a  lighted  torch,  or  a  bar  heated  to  luminous- 
ness,  is  waved  rapidly  before  the  eye,  the  appearance 
produced  is  that  of  a  ribbon  of  light;  which  is  universally 
understood  to  prove  that  the  visual  sensation  persists  for 
a  certain  short  time  after  its  cause  has  ceased.  No\v,  if 
ihts  happens  with  a  single  colour,  it  will  happen  with  a 
series  of  colours:  and  if  the  wheel  on  which  the  prismatic 
colours  have  been  painted,  is  turned  with  the  same 
rapidity  with  which  the  torch  was  waved,  each  of  the 
seven  sensations  of  colour  will  last  long  enough  to  be 
contemporaneous  with  all  the  others,  and  they  will 
naturally  produce  by  their  combination  the  same  colour 
as  if  they  had,  from  the  beginning,  been  excited  simul- 
taneously. If  anything  similar  to  this  obtains  in  our 
consciousness  generally  (and  that  it  obtains  in  many 
cares  of  consciousness  there  can  be  no  doubt)  it  will 
follow  that  whenever  the  organic  modifications  of  our 
nervous  fibres  succeed  one  another  at  an  interval  shorter 
than  the  duration  of  the  sensations  or  other  feelings  cor- 
responding to  them,  tliose  sensations  or  feelings  will, 
so  to  speak,  overlap  one  another,  and  becoming  simul- 


UNCONSCIOUS    MENTAL    MODIFICATIONS.  357 

taneous  instead  of  successive,  will  blend  into  a  state  of 
feeling,  probably  as  unlike  the  elements  out  of  which  it 
is  engendered,  as  the  colour  white  is  unlike  the  prismatic 
colours.  And  this  may  be  the  source  of  many  of  those 
states  of  internal  or  mental  feeling  which  we  cannot  dis- 
tinctly refer  to  a  prototype  in  experience,  our  experience 
only  supplying  the  elements  from  which,  by  this  kind  of 
mental  chemistry,  they  are  composed.  The  elementary 
feelings  may  then  be  said  to  be  latently  present,  or  to 
be  present  but  not  in.  consciousness.  The  truth,  how- 
ever, is  that  the  feelings  themselves  are  not  present,  con- 
sciously or  latently,  but  that  the  nervous  modifications 
which  are  their  usual  antecedents  have  been  present, 
while  the  consequents  have  been  frustrated,  and  another 
consequent  has  been  produced  instead.* 

*  These  considerations  may  serve  as  an  answer  to  Dr.  M'Cosh,  when 
he  maintains,  with  many  other  of  the  intuitive  philosDphers,  that  associa- 
tion cannot  generate  a  mental  state  specihcally  distinct  from  the  elements 
out  of  which  it  is  composed ;  which  amounts  to  a  denial  of  the  possibility 
of  mental  chemistry.  I  had  thought  that  such  an  experiment  as  that  of 
the  wheel  with  the  seven  colours,  in  which  seven  sensations,  following 
one  another  very  rapidly,  become,  or  at  least  generate,  one  sensation,  and 
that  one  totally  different  from  any  of  the  seven,  sutSciently  proved  the 
possibility  of  what  Dr.  M'Cosh  denies ;  but  he  writes  as  if  he  had  never 
heard  of  that  experiment.  "  I  can  discover,"  he  says  (p.  185),  "  no  evidence 
"  that  two  sensations  succeeding  one  another  will  ever  be  anything  else 
"  than  two  sensations."  The  analogous  facts  in  the  case  of  ideas  cannot 
be  appealed  to,  for  they  are  the  very  matter  disputed  ;  but  there  is  abun- 
dance of  similar  instances  in  sensation.  Dropping  succession  of  colours, 
let  Dr.  M'Cosh  look  at  an  ordinary  wheel  revolving  with  the  rapidity 
which  is  often  seen  in  machinery,  and  he  will  have  a  sensation  which  is 
not  one  of  rotatory  motion  at  all,  but  a  dizzy  spectrum  apparently 
stationary,  with  th^  exception  of  a  slight  degree  of  tremulous  movement. 

Dr.  M'Cosh,  in  his  reply,  says  he  was  perfectly  aware  of  the  experi- 
ments of  the  luminous  ring  and  the  wheel  with  the  seven  colours.  He 
does  not  seem  to  have  known  of  the  other  fact  which  I  mentioned,  that  a 
wheel  may  be  in  such  rapid  rotation  as  to  seem  stationary ;  for  he  offers 
instead  of  it  "  a  wheel  in  rapid  motion  appearing  stationary  when  made 
visible  by  instantaneous  electric  light,"  of  which  he  gives  the  true  explana- 
tion that,  seeing  the  wheel  only  for  the  instant,  we  do  not  really  see  it 
move.     The  wheel  in  my  example  is  rotating  in  broad  daylight. 

But  these  examples  of  mental  chemistry,  being  taken  from  sensation, 
are  (says  Dr.  M'Cosh)  merely  organic.  He  requires  me  to  produce 
examples  from  purely  mental  affections.  And  how  do  we  know  that  our 
mental  affections  are  not  also  organic,  having  for  their  immediate  ante- 
cedents states  of  the  nerves  and  brain  ?  This  is  not  only  possible,  but 
the  progress  of  science  has  rendered  it  almost  certain,  even  to  thos* 
who  are  far  from  being  Materialists  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  term. 


358  UNCONSCIOUS    MENTAL    MODIFICATIONS. 

There  are,  however,  abundant  proofs  that  association  can  generate  new 
mental  affections.  Let  us  take,  as  one  of  the  obvious  examples,  the  love 
of  money.  Does  any  one  think  that  money  has  intrinsically,  by  its  own 
nature,  any  more  value  to  us  than  the  first  shining  pebbles  we  pick  up, 
except  for  the  things  it  will  purchase  ?  Yet  its  association  with  these 
things  not  only  makes  it  desired  for  itself,  but  creates  in  many  minds  a 
passionate  love  of  it,  far  surpassing  the  desire  they  feel  for  any  of  the 
uses  to  which  it  can  be  put.  Not  only  the  love  of  money,  but  the  love  of 
acquisition,  of  possession,  of  accumulation,  is  a  feeling  created  by  associa- 
tion. What  is  desired  for  itself  is  the  use  and  enjoyment  of  individual 
objects  :  the  possession  of  a  store  of  them  is  at  first  desired  as  a  means  to 
that ;  but  after  it  has  been  long  pursued  as  a  means,  it  becomes  itself  an 
end — the  object  of  the  passion  of  appropriation,  or  property,  a  passion 
sui  generis,  and  (as  life  has  hitherto  been  carried  on)  one  of  the  principal 
moving  powers  in  human  affairs.  These,  Dr.  M'Cosh  may  say,  are  feelings, 
and  what  I  want  is  intellectual  states ;  I  desiderate  examples  of  "  the 
power  of  association  to  generate  new  ideas,  and  to  produce  belief."  As  an 
example,  then,  of  new  ideas,  take  the  idea  of  infinity.  Infinity  is  not  a  fact 
of  intuition,  nor  of  consciousness.  We  do  not  perceive  space  (for  example) 
to  be  infinite.  But  every  object  we  see  or  touch,  aud  every  portion  of 
space  that  we  cognise,  is  cognised  along  with  something  beyond  it.  We  hence 
become  incapable  of  conceiving  any  object  or  space  without  something 
beyond ;  that  is,  we  conceive  space  as  infinite.  And  along  with  this  new 
idea  a  belief  is  generated  ;  for  it  has  been,  and  is,  the  general  belief  of  man- 
kind, without  any  other  evidence  of  it,  that  space  is  actually  infinite.  As 
a  further  example  of  a  belief  generated  by  association,  take  the  acquired 
perceptions  of  sight.  On  the  lowest  estimate  of  these  which  is  made  by 
any  psychologist,  we  spontaneously  believe  that  we  see  much  which  we 
only  infer :  the  ideas  of  the  inferred  facts  are  so  blended  by  the  power 
of  association  with  the  sensations  which  suggest  them,  that  the  ideas  are 
confounded  with  sensations,  and  believed  to  be  direct  perceptions  of  sight. 


359 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON  S   THEORY    OF   CAUSATION. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  commences  his  treatment  of  the 
question  of  Causation,  by  warning  the  reader  against 
"  some  philosophers  who,  instead  of  accommodating 
their  solutions  to  the  problem,  have  accommodated  the 
problem  to  their  solutions."  It  might  almost  have  been 
supposed  that  this  expression  had  been  invented  to  be 
applied  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton  himself.  He  has  defined 
the  problem  in  a  manner  in  which  it  had  been  defined  by 
no  one  else,  for  no  visible  reason  but  to  adapt  it  to  a 
solution  which  no  one  else  had  thought  of.* 

"  When  we  are  aware,"  he  says,f  "  of  something 
which  begins  to  exist,  we  are,  by  the  necessity  of  our 
intelligence,  constrained  to  believe  that  it  has  a  Cause. 
But  what  does  this  expression,  that  it  has  a  cause, 
signify?  If  we  analyse  our  thought,  we  shall  find 
that  it  simply  means,  that  as  we  cannot  conceive  any 
new  existence  to  comme^fce,  therefore,  all  that  now  is 
seen  to  arise  under  a  new  appearance,  had  previously 
an  existence  under  a  prior  form.  We  are  utterly 
unable  to  realize  in  thought,  the  possibility  of  the 
complement  of  existence  being  either  increased  or 
diminished.  We  are  unable,  on  the  one  hand,  to  con- 
ceive nothing  becoming  something,  or,  on  the  other, 
something  becoming  nothing.  When  God  is  said  to 
create  out  of  nothing,  we  construe  this  to  thought  by 
supposing  that  he  evolves  existence  out  of  himself;  we 

*  When  I  say  no  one  else,  I  ought  perhaps  to  except  Krag,  from  whom 
n  another  place  (Lectures,  iv.  135)  our  author  quotes  a  sentence,  contain- 
ng  at  least  the  germ  of  his  own  theory. 

t  Lectures,  ii.  377,  378. 


360  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's 

"  view  the  Creator  as  the  cause  of  the  universe.  '  Ex 
"  nihilo  nihil,  in  nihilum  nil  posse  reverti,'  expresses,  in 
"  its  purest  form,  the  whole  intellectual  phsenomenon  of 
"  causality. 

"  There  is  thus  conceived  an  absolute  tautology  be- 
"  tween  the  effect  and  its  causes.  We  think  the  causes 
"  to  contain  all  that  is  contained  in  the  effect,  the  effect 
"  to  contain  nothing  which  was  not  contained  in  the 
"  causes.  Take  as  example :  A  neutral  salt  is  an  effect 
"  of  the  conjunction  of  an  acid  and  an  alkali.  Here  we 
"  do  not,  and  here  we  cannot,  conceive  that,  in  effect, 
"  any  new  existence  has  been  added,  nor  can  w^e  con- 
"  ceive  that  any  has  been  taken  away.  Put  another 
"  example :  Gunpowder  is  the  effect  of  a  mixture  of 
"  sulphur,  charcoal,  and  nitre,  and  those  three  substances 
*■  are  again  the  effect, — result,  of  simpler  constituents, 
"  either  known  or  conceived  to  exist.  Now,  in  all  this 
"  series  of  compositions  we  cannot  conceive  that  aught 
"  begins  to  exist.  The  gunpowder,  the  last  compound, 
"  we  are  compelled  to  think,  contains  precisely  the  same 
"  quantum  of  existence  that  its  ultimate  elements  con- 
"  tained  prior  to  the  combination.  Well,  we  explode 
"the  powder.  Can  we  conceive  that  existence  has  been 
"  diminished  by  the  annihilation  of  a  single  element 
"  previously  in  being,  or  increased  by  the  addition  of  a 
"  single  element  which  was  not  heretofore  in  nature? 
"  '  Omnia  mutantur ;  nihil  interit,'  is  what  we  think — 
"  what  we  must  think.  This  then  is  the  mental  phse- 
"  nomenon  of  causality, — that  we  necessarily  deny  in 
"  thought  that  the  object  which  appears  to  begin  to  be, 
"  really  so  begins ;  and  that  we  necessarily  identify  its 
"  present  with  its  past  existence." 

This  being  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  idea  of  what  Causality 
means,  he  thinks  it  unnecessary  to  suppose,  with  most 
of  the  philosophers  of  the  intuitive  school,  a  special 
principle  of  our  nature  to  account  for  our  believing  that 
every  phsonomenon  must  have  a  cause.  The  belief  is 
accounted  for,  "  not*  from  a  power,  but  from  an  impo- 
*  Lectures,  ii.  397. 


THEORY    OF    CAUSATION.  361 

tence  of  mind,"  namely,  from  the  Law  of  the  Conditioned  ; 
or  in  other  words,  from  the  incapacity  of  the  human 
mind  to  conceive  the  Absolute.  We  are  unable  to  con- 
ceive and  construe  to  ourselves  an  absolute  commence- 
ment. Whatever  we  think,  we  cannot  help  thinking  as 
existing ;  and  whatever  we  think  as  existing,  we  are 
compelled  to  think  as  having^  existed  through  all  past, 
and  as  destined  to  exist  through  all  future,  time.  It 
does  not  at  all  follow  that  this  is  really  the  fact,  for 
there  are  many  thmgs  inconceivable  to  us,  which  not 
only  may,  but  must  be,  true.  Accordingly  it  may  be 
true  that  there  is  an  absolute  commencement;  it  may 
not  be  true  tliat  every  phsenomenon  has  a  cause.  Human 
volitions  in  particular  may  come  into  existence  uncaused, 
and,  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  opinion,  they  do  so.  But 
to  us  a  beginning  and  an  end  of  existence  are  both 
inconceivable.  "  We  are*  unable  to  construe  in  thought, 
"  that  there  can  be  an  atom  absolutely  added  to,  or  an 
"  atom  absolutely  taken  away  from,  existence  in  general. 
"  Make  the  experiment.  Form  to  yourselves  a  notion  of 
"  the  universe ;  now,  can  you  conceive  that  the  quantity 
"  of  existence,  of  which  the  universe  is  the  sum,  is  either 
"  amplified  or  diminished  ?  You  can  conceive  the 
"  creation  of  the  world  as  lightly  as  you  can  conceive 
"  the  creation  of  an  atom.  But  what  is  creation  ?  It  is 
"  not  the  springing  of  nothing  into  something.  Far 
"  from  it :  it  is  conceived*  and  is  by  us  conceivable, 
"  merely  as  the  evolution  of  a  new  form  of  existence, 
"  by  the  fiat  of  the  Deity.  Let  us  suppose  the  very 
"  crisis  of  creation.  Can  we  realize  it  to  ourselves ^  in. 
"  thought,  that  the  moment  after  the  universe  came  into 
"  manifested  being,  there  was  a  larger  complement  of  existence 
"  in  the  universe  and  its  Author  together,  than  there  was  the 
"  moment  before,  in  the  Beity  himself  alone?  This  we 
*'  cannot  imagine.  What  I  have  now  said  of  our  concep- 
"  tions  of  creation,  holds  true  of  our  conceptions  of  annihila- 
"  tiou.  We  can  conceive  no  real  annihilation — no  absolute 
"  sinking  of  something  inio  nothing.  But,  as  creation 
*  Lectures,  ii.  405,  40<j. 


O 


362  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's 

"  is  cogitable  by  us  only  as  an  exertion  of  divine  power, 
"  so  annibilation  is  only  to  be  conceived  by  us  as  a  with- 
*'  drawal  of  the  divine  support.  All  that  there  is  now 
"  actually  of  existence  in  the  universe,  we  conceive  as 
**  having  virtually  existed,  prior  to  creation,  in  the 
"  Creator ;  and  in  imagining  the  universe  to  be  anni- 
"  hilated  by  its  Author,  we  can  only  imagine  this  as  the 
"  retraction  of  an  outward  energy  into  power," 

Had  tliis  extraordinary  view  of  Causation  proceeded ~ 
from  a  thinker  of  less  ability  and  authority  than  Sir 
W.  Hamilton,  I  think  there  are  few  readers,  who,  on 
reading  the  sentence  which  1  have  marked  by  italics, 
would  not  have  set  down  the  entire  speculation  as  a 
mauvaise  plaisanterie. 

But  since  any  opinion,  however  strange,  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  must  be  believed  to  be  serious,  and  no  serious 
opinion  of  such  a  man  ought  to  be  dismissed  unexamined, 
I  shall  proceed  to  enquire,  whether  the  problem  of  which 
he  propounds  this  solution,  is  the  problem  of  Causation, 
and  whether  the  solution  is  a  true  one.  To  take  the 
last  question  first ;  is  it  a  fact  that  we  cannot  conceive  a 
beginning  of  existence?  Is  it  true  that  whenever  we 
conceive  a  thing  as  existing,  we  are  incapable  of  con- 
ceiving a  time  when  it  did  not  exist,  or  a  time  when  it 
will  exist  no  longer  ? 

If,  by  incapacity  to  conceive  an  absolute  commence- 
ment, were  only  meant  that  we  cannot  imagine  a  time 
when  nothing  existed;  and  if  our  incapacity  of  conceiv- 
ing annihilation,  OTL\y  means  that  we  cannot  represent  to 
ourselves  an  universe  devoid  of  existence ;  I  do  not  deny 
it.  Whatever  else  we  may  suppose  removed,  there  always 
remains  the  conception  of  empty  space :  and  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  is  probably  right  in  his  opinion,  that  we  cannot 
imagine  even  empty  space  without  clothing  it  mentally 
with  some  sort  of  colour  or  figure.  Whoever  admits  the 
possibility  of  Inseparable  Association,  can  scarcely  avoid 
thinking  that  these  are  cases  of  it ;  and  that  we  are  un- 
able to  imagine  any  object  but  as  occupying  space,  or  to 
imagine  it  removed   without   leaving  that  space  either 


THEORY    OF   CAUSATION.  363 

vacant,  or  filled  by  soraething  else.  But  we  can  conceive 
both  a  beginning  and  an  end  to  all  physical  existence. 
As  a  mere  hypothesis,  the  notion  that  matter  cannot  be 
annihilated  arose  early ;  but  as  a  settled  belief,  it  is  the 
tardy  result  of  scientific  enquiry.  All  that  is  necessary 
for  imagining  matter  annihilated  is  presented  in  our 
daily  experience.  We  see  apparent  annihilation  when- 
ever water  dries  up,  or  fuel  is  consumed  without  a  visible 
residuum.  The  fact  could  not  offer  itself  to  our  imme- 
diate perceptions  in  a  more  palpable  shape,  if  the  anni- 
hilation were  real.  Having  an  exact  type  on  which  to 
frame  the  conception  of  matter  annihilated,  the  vulgar 
of  all  countries  easily  and  perfectly  conceive  it.  Those 
to  whom,  if  to  anybody,  it  is  inconceivable,  are  philoso- 
phers and  men  of  science,  who  having  formed  their 
familiar  conception  of  the  universe  on  the  opposite  theory, 
have  acquired  an  inseparable  association  of  their  own, 
which  they  cannot  overcome.  To  them  the  vapour  which 
has  succeeded  to  the  water  dried  up  by  the  sun,  the  gases 
which  replace  the  fuel  transformed  by  combustion,  have 
become  irrevocably  a  part  of  their  conception  of  the  entire 
phaenomenon.  But  the  ignorant,  who  never  heard  of 
these  things,  are  not  in  the  least  incommoded  by  the  want 
of  them  ;  and  if  they  were  not  told  the  contrary,  would 
live  and  die  without  suspecting  that  the  water,  and  the 
wood  or  coal,  were  not  destroyed. 

All  this  is  not  denied  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton ;  but 
his  answer  to  it  is,  that  if  the  universe  were  to  perish 
it  would  still  remain  capable  of  existing,  which,  it  seems, 
amounts  to  the  same  thing.  We  conceive  it  as  having 
"  virtually  existed  before  it  was  created,"  and  as  virtually 
existing  after  it  is  destroyed.  We  cannot  conceive  that 
there  was,  at  the  moment  after  creation,  "a  larger 
"  complement  of  existence  in  the  universe  and  its  Author 
"  together,  than  there  was  the  moment  before  in  the 
"  Deity  himself  alone."  Creation  is  to  us  merely  the 
conversion  of  power  into  outward  existence ;  annihila- 
tion only  "the  retraction  of  an  outward  energy  into 
power."     So  that  potential  existence  is  exactly  the  same 


364  SIR    WILLIAM    HAxMILTON's 

thinp^  as  actual  existence ;  the  difference  is  formal  only. 
Not  only  is  power  a  real  entity,  but  the  power  to 
create  an  universe  is  the  universe  :  all  created  things  are 
but  a  part  of  its  substance,  and  can  be  reabsorbed  into  it. 
And  this  is  presented  to  us,  not  as  a  recondite  ontological 
theory,  forced  upon  philosophers  as  an  escape  from  an 
otherwise  insu])erable  difficulty,  but  as  a  statement  of 
what  we  all  think,  and  cannot  but  think,  from  the  very 
constitution  of  our  thinking  faculty.  Is  this  the  fact  ? 
Does  any  one,  except  Sir  W  Hamilton,  think  that  in 
computing  the  sum  total  of  existence,  worlds  which  God 
might  have  created  but  did  not,  count  for  exactly  as 
much  as  they  would  if  he  had  really  created  them? 
There  is  a  corollary  from  this  doctrine  which  also 
deserves  attention.  If  the  sum  of  potential  and  actual 
existence  is  always  the  same,  then  with  every  increase 
of  actual  existence,  there  must  be  a  diminution  of 
power :  for  if  there  was  once  the  power  without  the 
universe,  and  is  now  the  same  quantity  of  power  and 
also  the  universe,  what  our  author  nautically  terms  the 
"  complement  of  existence^^  has  been  increased  :  which 
is  contrary  to  the  theory.  By  every  exercise,  therefore, 
of  creative  power,  God  is  less  powerful  :  he  has  less 
power  now,  by  a  whole  universe,  than  before  his  power 
of  creating  the  universe  had  been  transmuted  into  act; 
and  were  he  to  "retract"  the  actual  existence  into 
potential,  he  would  be  more  powertul  than  he  now  is, 
by  that  exact  amount.  Is  this  what  all  mankind  think, 
and  are  under  an  original  necessity  of  thinking?  Is 
this  the  mode  in  which,  by  the  "  law  of  the  Condi- 
tioned," every  one  of  us  is  absolutely  necessitated  to 
construe  the  idea  of  Creation?  Sir  W.  Hamilton  says 
it  is. 

By  a  desperate  attempt  to  put  an  intelligible  meaning 
into  the  theory,  somebody  may  interpret  it  to  mean 
that  before  the  universe  existed  in  fact,  it  existed  as  a 
thought  in  the  Divine  Mind ;  and  that  the  idea  of  an 
universe,  complete  in  all  its  details,  is  equivalent  in  the 
"  complement  of  existence"  to  an  actual  universe.     This 


THEORY    OF   CAUSATION.  365 

is  not,  perhaps,  incapable  of  beingf  maintained  ;  but  it 
affords  no  escape  from  the  difficulty.  For,  this  idea  in 
the  Divine  Mind — is  the  Divine  Mind  now  denuded  of 
it?  Has  the  De'itj forgotten  the  universe,  from  the  time 
when  the  divine  conception  was  reduced  into  act  ?  If 
not,  there  are  now  dot/i  the  universe  and  the  idea  of  the 
universe ;  that  is,  a  double  '*  complement  of  existence" 
instead  of  a  single.* 

But  were  it  ever  so  true  that  we  are  incapable  of 
conceiving  a  commencement  of  anything,  and  are  neces- 
sitated to  believe  that  whatever  now  exists  must  have 
existed  in  the  same  or  another  shape  through  all  past 
time  : — that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  should  imagine  t/iis  to  be 
the  law  of  Cause  and  Effect,  must  be  accounted  one  of  the 
most  singular  hallucinations  to  be  found  in  the  writings 
of  any  eminent  thinker.  According  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
when  we  say  that  everything  must  have  a  cause,  we 
mean  that  nothing  begins  to  exist,  but  everything  has 
always  existed.  I  ask  any  one,  either  philosopher  or 
common  man,  whether  he  does  not  mean  the  exact 
reverse ;  whether  it  is  not  because  things  do  begin  to 
exist,  that  a  cause  must  be  supposed  for  their  existence. 
The  very  words  in  which  the  axiom  of  Causation  is  com- 
monly stated,  and  which  our  author,  in  the  first  words 
of  his  exposition,  adopts,  are,  that  everything  which 
begins  to  exist  must  have  a  cause.  Is  it  possible  that 
this  axiom  can  be  grounded  on  the  fact  that  we  never 

*  The  curious  notion  tliat  potential  existence  is  tantamount  to  actual 
reappears  in  the  Appendix  to  the  Discussions  (p.  620).  "The  creation  a 
"  Nihilo  means  only,  that  the  universe,  when  created,  was  not  merely  put 
"  into  form,  an  original  chaos,  or  complement  of  brute  matter,  having 
"  preceded  a  plastic  energy  of  intelligence ;  but  that  the  universe  was 
"  called  into  actuality  from  potential  existence  by  the  Divine  fiat.  The 
"  Divine  fiat  therefore  was  the  proximate  cause  of  the  creation;  and  the 
"  Deity,  containing  the  cause,  contained,  potentially,  the  effect." 

It  is  so  frequent  in  our  author's  writings  to  find  doctrines  of  a  very 
decided  character  laid  down  in  one  page,  and  implicitly  or  even  directly 
denied  in  another,  that  so  strange  a  doctrine  as  the  one  in  question  could 
not  be  expected  to  escape  that  fate.  Accordingly,  in  p.  70'^  of  the  same 
volume,  "  the  Potential"  is  defined  to  be,  "  what  is  not  at  this,  but  may  be 
at  another  time."  If  so,  the  universe,  when  it  only  existed  potentially, 
was  not :  and  did  not  count  as  part  of  the  "  complement"  of  present 
existence. 


366  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's 

suppose  anything  to  begin  to  exist?  Does  not  he  who 
takes  away  a  beginning  of  existence,  take  away  all  causa- 
tion, and  all  need  of  a  cause  ?  Sir  W.  Hamilton  entirely 
mistakes  what  it  is,  which  causation  is  called  in  to 
^  explain.  The  Matter  composing  the  universe,  whatever 
philosophical  theory  we  hold  concerning  it,  we  know  by 
experience  to  be  constant  in  quantity  ;  never  beginning 
or  ending,  only  changing  its  forms.  But  its  forms  have 
a^beginning  and  ending  :  and  it  is  its  forms,  or  rather  its 
changes  of  form — the  end  of  one  form  and  beginning  of 
another — which  alone  we  seek  a  cause  for,  and  believe  to 
have  a  cause.  It  is  events,  that  is  to  say,  changes,  not 
substances,  that  are  subject  to  the  law  of  Causation. 
The  question  for  the  psychologist  is  not  why  we  believe 
that  a  substance,  but  why  we  believe  that  a  change  in 
the  form  of  a  substance,  must  have  a  cause.  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  in  a  tardy  defence  of  his  theory  against  objec- 
tions,* is  forced,  in  a  sort  of  way,  to  admit  this,  and 
virtually  to  acknowledge  that  all  which  we  really  con- 
sider as  caused,  we  consider  as  beginning  to  exist. 
Nothing  is  caused  but  events :  and  it  will  hardly  be 
said  that  w^e  conceive  an  event  as  having  never  had  a 
beginning,  but  been  in  existence  as  an  event  just  as 
much  before  it  happened  as  wJien  it  did  happen.  An 
event  then  being  the  only  thing  which  suggests  the 
belief  or  the  idea  of  having  or  requiring  a  cause.  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  may  be  charged  with  the  scientific  blunder 
which  he  imputes,  far  less  justly,  to  Brown  :  he  "  pro- 
"  fesses  to  explain  the  phienomenon  of  causality,  but  pre- 
*'  viously  to  explanation  evacuates  the  phsenomenon  of 
"  all  that  desiderates  explanation,"! 

Sir  VV.  Hamilton  was  familiar  with  the  teaching  of 
the  Aristotelian  schools  concerning  the  four  Causes — or 
rather  the  four  meanings  of  the  word  Cause,  for  syno- 
nymy and  homonymy  were,  in  their  classifications,  very 
often  confounded  :  1,  Materia.  2,  Forma.  3,  Efficiens. 
4,  Finis:  Efficiens   being  the  only  one  of  these  which 

*  Appendix  on  Causation,  Lectures,  ii.  538. 
t  Lectures,  ii.  384. 


THEORY    OF    CAUSATION.  367 

answers  either  to  the  common,  or  to  the  modem  philo- 
sophical notion  of  Cause.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  confounds 
Materia  with  Efficiens  ;  or  rather  ignores  Efficiens  alto- 
gether, and  imagines  that  when  the  rest  of  the  world 
are  speaking  of  Efficiens,  thej  mean  Materia.  It  is  the 
very  thing  which  they  pre-eminently  do  not  mean.  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  may  choose  to  call  nothing  Existence  ex- 
cept the  permanent  element  in  phsenomena ;  but  it  is  the 
changeable  element,  and  no  other,  which  is  referred  to  a 
cause,  or  which  could  ever  have  given  the  notion  of 
causation. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  says*  that  the  total  cause — that  the 
*'  concurring  or  co-efficient  causes,  in  fact,  constitute  the 
"  effect."  And  again,!  "  an  effect"  is  "  nothing  more  than 
"  the  sum  or  complement  of  all  the  partial  causes,  the 
"  concurrence  of  which  constitutes  its  existence."  "  An 
"  effecti  is  nothing  but  the  actual  union  of  its  constituent 
"  entities ;"  "  causes  always  continue  actually  to  exist 
*'  in  their  effects."  Because  the  orginal  matter  continues 
to  exist  in  the  matter  transformed,  the  Efficiens  which 
transformed  it  continues  to  exist  in  the  fact  of  the  change  ! 
Of  course  he  takes  as  his  example  a  case  in  which  the 
material  is  the  prominent  thing,  that  of  a  salt,  compounded 
of  an  acid  and  an  alkali.  "  Considering§  the  salt  as  an 
"  effect,  what  are  the  concurrent  causes, — the  co-efficients, 
"  — which  constitute  it  wliat  it  is?  There  are,  first, 
"  the  acid,  with  its  affinity  to  the  alkali ;  secondly,  the 
"  alkali,  with  its  affinity  to  the  acid  ;  and  thirdly,  the 
"  translating  force  (perhaps  the  human  hand)  which 
*'  made  their  affinities  available,  by  bringing  the  two  bodies 
"  within  the  sphere  of  mutual  attraction.  Each  of  these 
"  three  concurrents  must  be  considered  as  a  partial  cause  ; 
"  for  abstract  any  one,  and  the  eti'ect  is  not  produced." 
Strange  that  even  this  first  degree  of  analysis  should  not 
have  opened  his  eyes  to  the  fact,  that  the  moment  he 
admits  into  causa  efficiens  anything  more  than  materia^ 
his  theory  is  at  an  end.     For  he  will  indeed  find  in  the 

*  Lectures,  i.  59.  t  Ibid.  p.  97. 

X  Ibid.  iL  p.  540.  §  Ibid.  i.  p.  59. 


368  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's 

salt,  two  of  his  three  "co-efficients,"  the  acid  and  the 
alkali,  with  their  affinity  ;  but  where  will  he  find  in  it 
"  the  translating  force,  perhaps  the  human  hand  ?"  This 
essential  "  concause"  does  not  embarrass  him  at  all ;  it 
costs  him  nothing  to  make  away  with  it  altogether. 
*'  This  last,"  he  says,*  "  as  a  transitory  condition  and 
"  not  always  the  same,  we  shall  throw  out  of  account." 
if  we  throw  out  of  account  all  that  is  transitory,  we 
have  no  difficulty  in  proving  that  all  that  is  left  is  per- 
manent. But  the  transitory  conditions  are  as  much  a 
part  of  the  cause  as  the  permanent  conditions.  Our 
author  has  just  before  said  that  he  takes  the  term  causes 
"  as  synonymous  for  all  without  which  the  eifect  would 
"  not  be  ;"  and  if  the  effect  is  "  the  sum  or  complement" 
of  all  the  causes,  the  transitory  as  well  as  the  permanent 
elements  must  be  found  in  it.  To  exclude  all  the  transi- 
tory part  of  the  cause,  is  to  exclude  the  whole  cause, 
except  the  materials.  Suppose  the  effect  to  be  St.  Paul's  : 
in  assigning  its  causes,  the  will  of  the  government,  the 
mind  of  the  architect,  and  the  labour  of  the  builders,  are 
all  cast  out,  for  they  are  all  transitory,  and  only  the  stones 
and  mortar  remain. f 

It  will  have  been  remarked,  that  in  propounding  this 

*  Lectures,  i.  97. 

f  On  the  same  shoal  is  stranded  an  argument  appended  to  the  same 
discussion,  which  our  author  seems  to  think  of  considerable  value  in 
the  establishment  of  a  First  Cause.  The  progress  from  cause  to  effect,  he 
says,  (Lectures,  i.  59,  60,)  is  from  the  simpler  to  the  more  complex.  "  The 
*'  lower  we  descend  in  the  series  of  causes,  the  more  complex  will  be  the 
"  product ;  the  higher  we  ascend,  it  will  be  the  more  simple."  To  prove 
this,  he  appeals  to  his  example,  the  composition  of  a  salt.  Now,  the  salt 
is  indeed  more  complex  than  either  of  its  chemical  ingredients,  the  acid 
and  the  alkali ;  but  need  it  be,  or  is  it,  more  complex  than  the  remaining 
"  co-eiEcient,"  the  human  hand,  or  whatever  power,  natural  or  artificial, 
brings  the  acid  and  alkali  together  P  The  event  which  causes,  may  be  in  any 
degree  whatever  a  more  complex  fact,  than  the  event  which  is  caused  by  it. 

Professor  Eain  (Logic,  ii.  36)  considers  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory  of 
Causation  to  be  an  anticipation  of  the  scientific  doctrine  of  the  Conserva- 
tion of  Force.  There  is,  doubtless,  some  analogy  between  them,  but  they 
seem  to  me  radically  different.  Force  is  the  principle  of  Change,  and  is, 
therefore,  really  the  leading  ingredient  in  causation  :  but  the  conservation 
in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory  is  conservation  of  the  element  which  has 
nothing  to  do  with  change.  It  is  only  equivalent  to  the  old  established 
fact  of  the  unchangeableness  in  the  quantity  of  Matter,  in  other  words,  of 
Besistance. 


THEORY   OF    CAUSATION.  369 

tlieory  of  the  belief  in  Causation,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  gives 
up  Causation  as  a  necessary  la^v  of  the  universe  ;  main- 
taining that  a  fact  is  not  to  be  supposed  impossible  to 
Nature  because  we  are  impotent  to  conceive  it,  and 
indeed  regarding  the  free  acts  of  an  intelligent  being  as 
an  exception  to  the  universal  it}''  of  the  law  of  Cause  and 
Effect.  But  while  in  one  place  he  pays  this  homage  to 
his  own  principles,  in  another  he  entirely  takes  leave  of 
them,  and  glides  back  into  the  beaten  path  of  the  school 
of  thought  which,  erecting  human  capacities  of  concep- 
tion into  the  measure  of  the  universe,  maintains  that 
causes  must  be,  because  we  are  incapable  of  conceiving 
phsenomena  without  them.  Alter  describing  the  process 
of  ascending  from  cause  to  cause,  quite  gratuitously,  as  a 
progress  towards  unity,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  says,*  "  Philo- 
"  sophy  thus,  as  the  knowledge  of  effects  in  their  causes, 
"  necessarily  tends,  not  towards  a  plurality  of  ultimate 
"  or  first  causes,  but  towards  one  alone.  This  first  cause, 
*'  the  Creator,  it  can  indeed  never  reach,  as  an  object  of 
"  immediate  knowledge;  but,  as  the  convergence  towards 
"  unity  in  the  ascending  series  is  manifest  in  so  far  as 
"  that  series  is  within  our  view"  (here  he  confounds 
convergence  from  many  to  few  with  convergence  towards 
one)  ''*  and  as  it  is  even  impossible  for  the  mind  to  suppose 
"  the  convergence  not  continuous  and  complete,  it  follows, 
"  unless  all  analogy  be  rejected — unless  our  intelligence 
"  be  declared  a  lie,  that  we  must,  philosophically,  believe 
"  in  that  ultimate  or  primary  unity  which,  in  our  present 
"  existence,  we  are  not  destined  in  itself  to  apprehend." 

A  deliverance  more  radically  at  variance  with  the 
author's  own  canons,  could  scarcely  have  been  made. 
For,  first,  one  of  the  principal  of  them  is,  that  our  in- 
ability to  conceive  a  thing  as  possible,  is  no  argument 
whatever  against  its  being  true.  In  the  second  place, 
the  alleged  impossibility  oi  conceiving  any  of  the  phaeno- 
mena  of  the  universe  to  be  uncaused,  applies  equally,  on 
his  own  showing,  to  the  First  Cause  itself.  For,  though 
he  here  talks  only  of  one  inconceivability,  we  are,  if  his 

*  Lectures,  i.  60. 
B  B 


370  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's 

theory  be  correct,  under  the  pressure  of  two  counter- 
inconceivabilities — being  equally  unable  to  conceive  an 
uncaused  beginning,  or  an  infinite  regress  from  effect  to 
cause  :  it  is  equally  inconceivable  to  us  that  there  should, 
as  that  there  should  not,  be  a  First  Cause.  In  this 
difficulty,  by  what  right  does  he  (I  mean  merely  as 
a  philosopher,  and  on  his  own  principles)  select  one  of 
the  rival  inconceivabilities  as  the  real  interpreter  of 
Nature,  in  preference  to  the  other?  And,  having 
selected  it,  why  apply  it  up  to  a  certain  point,  and  there 
stop  ?  Why  must  all  the  phsenomena  of  experience  be 
referred  to  a  single  Cause,  because  we  cannot  conceive 
anything  uncaused,  and  that  single  cause  be  proclaimed 
uncaused,  notwithstanding  the  same  impossibility?  An 
argument  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  would  not  be  complete 
unless  it  wound  up  with  his  tiresome  final  appeal,  "  unless 
our  intelligence  be  declared  a  lie."  It  is  time  to  under- 
stand, once  for  all,  what  this  means.  Does  it  mean  that 
if  our  intelligence  cannot  conceive  one  thing  apart  from 
another,  the  one  thing  cannot  exist  without  the  other  ?  If 
yes,  what  becomes  of  the  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned? 
If  no,  what  becomes  of  the  present  argument  ? 

*  It  has  been  suggested  to  me  by  a  correspondent  to  whom  I  have  more 
than  once  adverted,  as  an  explanation  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  conflicting 
language  respecting  conceivability  as  a  test  of  truth,  that  he  probably 
distinguished  between  what  may  be  termed  unilateral  and  bilateral  incon- 
ceivableness.  I  state  the  distinction  in  the  words  of  my  able  correspondent. 
"  Bilateral  inconceivableness  is  no  test  of  truth,  for  the  obvious  reason 
"  that  it  applies  equally  to  two  contradictory  propositions.  But  Hamilton 
"  thought  unilateral  inconceivableness — an  inconceivableness  limited  to 
"  one  side  of  a  question  only — a  proof  of  a  positive  deliverance  of  con- 
"  sciousness  on  the  other  side.  Hamilton  therefore  frequently  employs 
"  the  principle  that  what  is  unilaterally  inconceivable  must  be  false,  while 
"  he  invariably  denies  that  bilateral  inconceivableness  is  any  test  of 
"  falsehood." 

Sir  "W.  Hamilton  may  have  had  some  such  distinction  in  his  mind, 
though  if  he  had,  it  would  not  have  been  going  out  of  his  way  to  have 
stated  it,  instead  of  constantly  enunciating  the  doctrine  that  things  incon- 
ceivable to  us  may  be  true,  in  lan^^uage  which  recognises  no  difference 
between  the  two  cases.  But  the  distinction,  if  he  made  it,  is  of  no  service 
to  him.  If  it  is  possible  for  anything  to  be  true  which  is  inconceivable  to 
■us,  the  inconceivability  of  a  supposition  cannot  be  a  deliverance  of 
consciousness  against  it.  On  the  contrary,  the  fact  that  both  sides  of  an 
alternative  which  has  no  third  side  may  be  inconceivable,  is  a  reductio  ad 
ahsurdum  of  the  opinion  that  inconceivability  is  an  evidence  of  falsehood. 


THEORY   OF    CAUSATION.  371 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  makes  a  far  better  fisrure  when 
ar^uin^  a«:ainst  other  theories  of  Causation,  than  when 
maintaining^  his  own.  He  is  usually  acute  in  finding 
the  weak  points  in  other  people's  philosophies  ;  and  he 
brings  this  talent  into  play,  effectively  enouojh,  on.  the 
present  subject.  He  is  not,  indeed,  at  all  successful  in 
combating  the  doctrine  (substantially  that  of  Hume  and 
Brown)  that  it  is  experience  which  proves  the  fact  of 
causation,  and  association  which  generates  the  idea :  for 
aijainst  this  he  only  has  to  say,  that  experience  and  asso- 
ciation cannot  account  for  necessity.  Now,  as  to  real 
necessity,  we  do  not  know  that  it  exists  in  the  case.  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  himself  is  of  opinion  that  it  does  not, 
and  that  there  are  phenomena  (the  volitions  of  rational 
intelligences)  which  do  not  depend  on  causes.  And 
as  for  the  feeling  of  necessity,  or  what  is  termed  a 
necessity  of  thought,  it  is  (as  I  have  already  observed), 
of  all  mental  phsenomena  positively  the  one  which  an 
inseparable  association  is  the  most  evidently  competent 
to  generate.  I  cannot,  therefore,  attribute  any  value  to 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  discussion  of  this  point ;  but  in  his 
refutation  of  some  of  the  theories  of  causation  which 
have  originated  in  his  own  hemisphere  of  the  intellectual 
world,  he  is  verj'-  felicitous.  Take,  for  example,  the 
doctrine  of  Wolf  and  the  Leibnitzians  (though  not  of 
Leibnitz),  which  "attempts  to  establish  the  principle 
"  of  Causality  upon  the  principle  of  Contradiction." 
"  Listen,"  says  our  author,*  "  to  the  pretended  demon- 
"  stration : — Whatever  is  produced  without  a  cause,  is 
"  produced  by  nothing ;  in  other  words,  has  nothing  for 
"  its  cause.  But  nothing  can  no  more  be  a  cause  than 
"  it  can  be  something.  The  same  intuition  which  makes 
"  us  avvare,  that  nothing  is  not  something,  shows  us  that 
"  everything  must  have  a  real  cause  of  its  existence. — 
"  To  this,  it  is  sufficient  to  say,  that  the  existence 
"  of  causes  being  the  point  in  question,  the  existence 
"  of  causes  must  not  be  taken  for  granted,  in  the  very 
*'  reasoning  which  attempts  to  prove  their  reality.  In 
*  Lectures,  iL  396,  397. 
B  B  2 


|Gm^<^' 


372  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's 

"  excluding  causes,  we  exclude  all  causes ;  and  conse- 
"  quently  we  exclude  Nothing,  considered  as  a  cause;  it 
"  is  not,  tlierefore,  allowable,  contrary  to  that  exclusion, 
"  to  suppose  Nothing  as  a  cause,  and  then  from  the 
*'  absurdity  of  that  supposition  to  infer  the  absurdity  of 
"  the  exclusion  itself.  If  everything  must  have  a  cause,  it 
"  follows  that,  upon  the  exclusion  of  other  causes,  we  must 
"  accept  of  Nothing  as  a  cause.  But  it  is  the  very  point 
"  at  issue,  whether  everything  must  have  a  cause  or  not; 
"  and  therefore  it  violates  the  first  principles  of  reasoning 
"  to  take  this  qua?situm  itself  as  granted.  This  opinion," 
adds  our  author,  "  is  now  universally  abandoned." 

But  there  is  another  theory  of  Causation  which  is  not 
abandoned,  but  has  formed  for  some  time  past  the  strong- 
hold of  the  Intuitive  school.  This  is,  that  we  acquire 
both  our  notion  of  Causation,  and  our  belief  in  it,  from 
an  internal  consciousness  of  power  exerted  by  ourselves, 
in  our  voluntary  actions :  that  is,  in  the  motions  of  our 
bodies,  for  our  will  has  no  other  direct  action  on  the  out- 
ward world.  Tliis  relation  of  the  act  of  will  to  the 
bodily  movement,  it  is  maintained,  is  "  not  a  simple 
"  relation  of  succession.  The  will  is  not  for  us  a  pure 
"  act  without  efficiency ;  it  is  a  productive  energy ;  so 
"  that  in  volition  there  is  given  to  us  the  notion  of 
"  cause ;  and  this  notion  we  subsequently  transport — 
"  project  out  from  our  internal  activities,  into  the  changes 
"  of  the  external  world." 

To  this  doctrine  8ir  W.  Hamilton  gives  the  following 
conclusive  answer.*  "  'J  his  reasoning,  in  so  far  as  re- 
"  gards  the  mere  empirical  fact  of  our  consciousness  of 
"  causalit}^,  in  the  relation  of  our  will  as  moving  and  of 
"  our  limbs  as  moved,  is  refuted  -by  the  consideration, 
"  that  between  the  overt  fact  of  corporeal  movement  of 
"  which  we  are  cognisant,  and  the  internal  act  of  mental 
"  determination  of  which  we  are  also  cognisant,  there 
"  intervenes  a  numerous  series  of  intermediate  agencies 
"of  which  we  have  no  knowledge;  and  consequently, 
"  that  we  can  have  no  consciousness  of  any  causal  con- 

*  Lectures,  ii.  391,  392. 


THEORY    OF   CAUSATION.  373 

"  nexion  between  the  extreme  links  of  this  chain, — the 
"  volition  to  move  and  the  limb  moving,  as  this  hypo- 
"  thesis  asserts.  No  one  is  immediately  conscious,  tor 
"example,  of  moving  his  >  arm  through  his  voHtion. 
"  Previously  to  this  ultimate  movement,  muscles,  nerves, 
"  a  multitude  of  solid  and  fluid  parts  must  be  set  in 
"  motion  by  the  will,  but  of  this  motion  we  know,  from 
"  consciousness,  actually  nothing.  A  person  struck  with 
"  paralysis  is  conscious  of  no  inability  in  his  limb,  to 
"  fultil  the  determination  of  his  will  ;  and  it  is  only  after 
"  having  willed,  and  finding  that  his  limbs  do  not  obey 
"  his  volition,  that  he  learns  by  this  experience,  that  the 
"  external  movement  does  not  follow  the  internal  act. 
"  But  as  the  paralytic  learns  after  the  volition  that  his 
**  limbs  do  not  obey  his  mind  ;  so  it  is  only  after  the 
"  volition  that  the  man  in  health  learns  that  his  limbs 
"  do  obey  the  mandates  of  his  will."* 

With  this  reasoning,  borrowed  as  our  author  admits 
from  Hume,  I  entirely  agree ;  and  I  wonder  that  it  did 
not  prove  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton  how  little  the  objection 
to  a  doctrine,  that  it  is  opposed  to  our  natural  beliefs, 
deserves  the  exaggerated  value  he  sets  upon  it ;  for  if 
there  is  a  natural  belief  belonging  to  us,  I  should  sup- 

*  The  same  argument  is  restated  in  the  Dissertations  on  Reid  (pp.  866' 
867)  with  some  additional  development.  *'  Volition  to  move  a  limb,  and 
"  the  actual  moving  of  it,  are  the  first  and  last  in  a  series  of  more  than 
"  two  successive  events,  and  cannot,  therefore,  stand  to  each  other,  imme- 
"  diately,  in  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect.  They  may,  however,  stand 
"  to  each  other  in  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  mediately.  But  then, 
"  if  they  can  be  known  in  consciousness  as  thus  mediately  related,  it  is  a 
"  necessary  condition  of  such  knowledge,  that  the  intervening  series  of 
"  causes  aud  eifects,  through  which  the  final  movement  of  the  limb  is  sup- 
"  posed  to  be  mediately  dependent  on  the  primary  volition  to  move,  should 
"  be  known  to  consciousness  immediately  under  that  relation.  But  this 
"  intermediate,  this  connecting  series  is  confessedly  unknown  to  conscious- 
"  ness  at  all,  far  less  as  a  series  of  causes  and  effects.  It  follows  there- 
"  fore  a  fortiori,  that  the  dependency  of  the  last  on  the  first  of  these  events, 
"  as  of  an  effect  upon  its  cause,  must  be  to  consciousness  unknown.  In 
"  other  words  :  having  no  consciousness  that  the  volition  to  move  is  the 
"  efficacious  force  (power)  by  which  even  the  event  immediately  conse- 
"  quent  on  it  (say  the  transmission  of  the  nervous  influence  from  brain  to 
"  muscle)  is  produced,  such  event  being,  in  fact,  itself  to  consciousness 
"  occult ;  multo  minus  can  we  have  a  consciousness  of  that  voUtion  being 
"  the  efficacious  force  by  which  the  ultimate  movement  of  the  limb  is 
"  mediately  determined." 


374  sm  WILLIAM  Hamilton's 

pose  it  to  be,  that  we  are  directly  conscious  of  ability  to 
move  our  limbs.  It  is,  nevertheless,  our  author's  opinion 
that  the  belief  is  groundless,  and  that  we  learn  even  a 
fact  so  closely  connected  with  us,  in  the  way  in  which 
any  bystander  learns  it;  by  outward  observation.* 

Mr.  Mansel,  who  agrees  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton  in  so 
many  of  his  opinions,  separates  from  him  here,  and" 
adopts  a  modified  form  of  the  Volitional  Theory.  He 
acknowledges  the  validity  of  Hume's  and  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton's argument,  and  does  not  derive  the  idea  of  Power 
or  Causation  from  mind  acting  upon  body — from  my 
will  producing  my  bodily  motions — but  from  myself 
producing  my  will.  "  Inf  every  act  of  volition,  I  am 
"  iully  conscious  that  it  is  in  my  power  to  form  the  reso- 
"  lution  or  to  abstain ;  and  this  constitutes  the  presenta- 
"  tive  consciousness  of  free  will  and  of  power."  And  the 
sole  notion  we  have  of  causation  in  the  outward  uni- 
verse, as  anything  more  than  invariable  antecedence  and 
.  ^consequence,  is  thatj  of  a  relation  between  two  objects, 
uy^  "  similar  to  that  which  exists  between  ourselves  and  our 
"^  •  "  volitions."  Thus  interpreted,  continues  Mr.  Mansel, § 
;yv%. '  it  is  "  an  interesting  illustration  of  the  universal  ten- 
"  dency  of  men  to  identify,  as  far  as  may  be,  other  agents 
"  with  themselves,  even  when  the  identification  tends  to 
"  the  destruction  of  all  clear  thinking  : — furnishing  a 
"  psychological  explanation  of  a  form  of  speech  which 
"  has  prevailed  and  will  continue  to  prevail  among  all 
"  people  in  all  times,  but  not  properly  to  be  called  a 
"  necessary  truth,  nor  capable  of  any  scientific  application  ; 
"  inasmuch  as,  in  any  such  application,  it  may  be  true  or 
"  false,  without  our  being  able  to  determine  which,  as 
.  "  the  object  of  which  it  treats  never  comes  within  the 
"  reach  of  our  faculties.     What  is  meant  hj  power  in  a 

*  Sir  W.  Hamilton  adds,  as  a  further  objection  to  tlie  theory,  that  it 
does  not  account  for  that,  in  our  notion  of  causation,  which  is  the  sole 
ground  for  rejecting  the  Experience  theory  of  it :  its  "  quality  of  necessity 
and  universality."  And  this  is  true  :  the  philo.sophers  who  combat  the 
Experience  theory  of  causation  by  the  Volitional  one,  deprive  themselves 
of  a  very  bad,  but  still  the  best  argument  on  their  side  of  the  question, 
t  Prolegomena  Logica,  p.  139. 
X  Ibid.  p.  140.        §  Ibid.  pp.  142,  143. 


THEORY    OF    CAUSATION.  375 

"  fire  to  melt  wax  ?  How  and  when  is  it  exertrd,  and  in 
"  what  manner  does  it  come  under  our  cognizance  ?  Sup- 
"  posing  such  power  to  be  suspended  by  an  act  of  Omni- 
"  potence,  the  Supreme  Being  at  the  same  time  producing 
"  the  succession  of  phaenomena  by  the  immediate  inter- 
"  position  of  his  own  will, — could  we  in  any  way  detect 
"  the  change?  Or  suppose  the  course  of  nature  to  be 
"  governed  by  a  pre-established  harmony,  which  ordained 
"  that  at  a  certain  moment  fire  and  wax  should  be  in  the 
"  neighbourhood  of  each  other,  that,  at  the  same  moment, 
"  fire  by  itself  should  burn,  and  wax  by  its  own  laws 
"  should  melt,  neither  affecting  the  other, — would  not 
"  all  the  perceptible  phaenomena  be  precisely  the  same  as 
"  at  present?  These  suppositions  may  be  extravagant, 
"  though  they  are  supported  by  some  of  the  most  emi- 
"  nent  names  in  philosophy ;  but  the  mere  possibility  of 
"  making  them  shows  that  the  rival  hypothesis  is  not  a 
"  necessary  truth  ;  the  various  principles  being  opposed, 
"  only  like  the  vortices  of  Descartes  and  the  gravitation 
*'  of  Newton,  as  more  or  less  plausible  methods  of  account- 
"  ing  for  the  same  physical  phseuomena."  Mr.  Mansel 
recognises  the  possibility  that  in  some  other  portion  of 
the  universe,  phaenomena  may  succeed  one  another  at 
random,  without  laws  of  causation,  or  by  laws  which  are 
continually  changing.  We  cannot,  he  says,  conceive  this 
state  of  things,  but  we  can  suppose  it ;  and  this  very  in- 
ability to  conceive  a  phaenomenon  as  taking  place  without 
a  cause — in  other  words,  this  subjective  necessity  of  the 
law  of  cause  and  effect — results,  in  his  opinion,  merely 
from  the  conditions  of  our  experience.  If  we  were  asked, 
why  a  physical  change  must  have  a  cause,  "  we*  should 
"  probably  reply — Because  matter  cannot  change  of 
"  itself.  But  why  cannot  we  think  of  matter  as  changing 
*'  itself  ?  Because  power ^  and  the  origination  of  change^  or 
"  self-determination,  have  never  been  given  to  us,  save 
"  in  one  form,  that  of  the  actions  of  the  conscious  self. 
"  What  I  am  to  conceive  as  taking  place,  1  must  con- 
"  ceive  as  taking  place  in   the  only  manner  of  taking 

*  Prol.  Log.  p.  148. 


376  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's 

"  place  in  which  it  has  ever  been  presented  to  me." 
(Here  Mr.  Mansel  exas^gerates  one  of  the  consequences 
of  the  law  of  Inseparable  Association,  through  his  having 
reached  the  consequence  only  empirically,  and  not  ana- 
lysed it  by  means  of  the  law.)  "  This  reduces  the  law 
"  of  Causality,  in  one  sense  indeed  to  an  empirical  prin- 
"  ciple,  but  to  an  empirical  principle  of  a  very  peculiar 
"  character ;  one  namely,  in  which  it  is  psychologically 
"  impossible  that  experience  should  testily  in  more  than 
"  one  way.  Such  principles,  however  empirical  in  their 
"  origin,  are  co-extensive  in  their  application  with  the 
"  whole  domain  of  thought." 

And  further  on,*  "To  call  the  principle  of  Causality 
"  as  thus  explained  a  Law  of  Thought,  would  be  incor- 
"  rect.  We  cannot  think  the  contrary,  not  because  the 
"  laws  of  thought  lorbid  us,  but  because  the  material  for 
"  thought  is  wanting.  Thought  is  subject  to  two  difPe- 
"  rent  modes  of  restriction :  firstly,  from  its  own  laws, 
"  by  which  it  is  restricted  as  to  its  form  j  and  secondly, 
"  from  the  laws  of  intuition,  by  which  it  is  restricted  as 
"  to  its  matter.  The  restriction,  in  the  present  instance, 
*'  is  of  the  latter  kind.  We  cannot  conceive  a  course  of 
"  nature  without  uniform  succession,  as  we  cannot  con- 
"  ceive  a  being  who  sees  without  eyes  or  hears  without 
"  ears  ;  because  we  cannot,  under  existing  circumstances, 
"  experience  the  necessary  intuition.  But  such  things 
"  may,  notwithstanding,  exist ;  and  under  other  circum- 
"  stances,  they  might  become  objects  of  possible  concep- 
"  tion,  the  laws  of  the  process  of  conception  remaining 
"  unaltered." 

In  this  exposition,  which,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say, 
contains  more  sound  philosophy  than  is  to  be  found  on 
the  same  subject  in  all  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  writings,  I 
must,  nevertheless,  take  exception  to  the  main  doctrine 
— that  the  type  on  which  we  Irarae  our  notion  of  Power 
or  Causation  in  general,  is  the  power,  not  of  our  volitions 
over  matter,  but  of  our  Self  over  our  volitions.  In  com- 
mon  with  one   half  of  the  psychological   world,  I  am 

*  ProLLog.  p.  149. 


THEORY    OP    CAUSATION.  377 

wholly  i<^norant  of  my  possessing  any  such  power.  I 
can  indeed  influence  my  own  volitions,  but  only  as 
other  people  can  influence  my  volitions,  by  the  em- 
ployment of  appropriate  means.  Direct  power  over  my 
volitions  I  am  conscious  of  none.  However  possible  it 
may  be  that  I  possess  this  power  without  knowing  it,  a 
fact  of  consciousness  contestable  and  contested  cannot 
well  be  the  source  and  prototype  of  an  idea  common 
to  all  mankind.  I  agree,  however,  with  Mr.  Mansel  in 
the  opinion  which  he  shares  with  Conite,  James  Mill,  and 
many  others  who  see  nothing  in  causation  but  invariable 
antecedence;  that  we  naturally,  and  unavoidably,  form 
our  first  conception  of  all  the  agencies  in  the  universe 
from  the  analogy  of  human  volitions.  The  obvious 
reason  is,  that  nearly  everything  which  is  interesting  to 
us,  comes,  in  our  earliest  infancy,  either  from  our  own 
voluntary  motions,  or  (a  consideration  too  much  neg- 
lected) from  the  voluntary  motions  of  others  ;  and,  among 
the  few  sequences  of  phsenomena  which  at  that  time  tall 
within  the  scope  of  our  perceptions,  scarcely  any  others 
afford  us  the  spectacle  of  an  apparently  absolute  com- 
mencement ;  of  one  thing  setting  others  in  motion  with- 
out being  in  motion  itselt^ — or  originating  changes  in 
other  things,  while  not  itself  undergoing  any  visible 
change.  But  as  I  do  not  believe,  any  more  than  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  or  Mr.  Mansel,  that  the  state  ot  mind  called 
volition  carries  with  it  a  prophetic  anticipation,  which 
can  inform  us  prior  to  experience  that  volition  will  be 
followed  by  an  effect;  I  conceive  that,  no  more  in  this  \ 
than  in  any  other  case  of  causation,  have  we  evidence  of 
anything  more  than  what  experience  informs  us  of:  and 
it  informs  us  of  nothing  except  immediate,  invariable, 
and  unconditional  sequence. 

It  is  allowed  on  ail  hands  that  part,  at  least,  of  our 
idea  of  power,  is  the  expectation  we  feel,  that  when  the 
cause  exists,  we  shall  perceive  the  effest ;  but  Hume  him- 
selt  admits  that  in  the  common  notion  of  power  there  is 
an  additional  element,  an  animal  nisus,  as  he  calls  it, 
which  would  be  more  properly  termed  a  conception  of 


oJa  Oa  JO^    Uv  I^Ja  5>wirrf«rCo    ^j^ 


37S 


Vv'- 


SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON  S 


effort.  That  this  idea  of  effort  enters  into  our  notion  of 
Power,  is  to  my  mind  one  of  the  stronsjest  proofs  that 
this  notion  is  not  derived  from  the  relation  of  ourselves 
to  our  volitions,  but  from  that  of  our  volitions  to  our 
actions.  The  idea  of  Effort  is  essentially  a  notion  derived 
from  the  action  of  our  muscles,  or  from  that  combined 
with  affections  of  our  brain  and  nerves.  Every  one  of 
our  muscular  movements  has  to  contend  a^^ainst  resis- 
tance, either  that  of  an  outward  object,  or  the  mere  fric- 
tion and  weight  of  the  moving  organ  ;  every  voluntary 
motion  is  consequently  attended  by  the  muscular  sensa- 
tion of  resistance,  and  if  sufficiently  prolonged,  by  the 
additional  muscular  sensation  of  fatigue.  Effort,  con- 
sidered as  an  accompaniment  of  action  upon  the  outward 
world,  means  nothing,  to  us,  but  those  muscular  sensa- 
tions. Since  we  experience  them  whenever  we  voluntarily 
move  an  object,  we  by  a  mere  act  of  natural  generaliza- 
tion, the  unconscious  result  of  association,  on  beholding 
the  same  object  moved  by  the  wind  or  by  any  other 
agent,  conceive  the  wind  as  overcoming  the  same  ob- 
stacle, and  figure  it  to  ourselves  as  putting  forth  the 
same  effort.  Children  and  savages  sincerely  mistake  it 
for  a  conscious  effort.  We  outgrow  that  belief;  but 
it  is  not  conformable  to  the  mode  of  action  of  the  human 
intellect  that  it  should  pass  uno  saltu,  from  a  complete 
assimilation  of  the  two  phsenomena,  to  conceiving  them 
as  totally  different.  The  "  natural  tendency  of  men"  so 
justly  characterized  by  Mr.  Mansel,  '*  to  identify,  as  far  as 
may  be,  other  agents  with  themselves,"  does  not  admit 
itself  baffled  and  give  up  the  attempt  after  the  first 
failure.  The  consequents  being  the  same,  when  the 
mind  is  no  longer  able  to  suppose  an  exact  parity  in  the 
antecedents,  it  still  thinks  that  there  must  be  something 
in  common  between  them  :  and  when  obliged  to  admit 
that  there  is  volition  in  one  case,  and  a  mere  unconscious 
object  in  the  other,  it  interposes  between  the  antecedent 
and  the  consequent  an  abstract  entity,  to  express  what 
is  supposed  common  to  the  animate  and  the  inanimate 
agency — through  which  they  both  work,  and  in  the  ab- 


THEORY    OF    CAUSATION.  379 

sence  of  which  nothing  would  be  eifected.  This  purely  / 
subjective  notion,  the  product  of  generalization  and  ab- 
straction acting  on  the  real  feeling  of  muscular  or  nervous  j 
eifort,  is  Power.  And  this,  I  conceive,  is  the  psycholo- 
gical rationale  of  Comte's  great  historical  generalization, 
that  the  metaphysical  conception  (as  he  terms  it)  of  the 
universe  succeeds  by  a  natural  law  to  the  Fetish  con- 
ception, and  becomes  the  agent  by  which  the  Fetish 
theory  is  transformed  into  Polytheism,  this  into  Mono- 
theism, and  Monotheism  itself  is  frittered  away  into 
energies  and  attributes  of  Nature,  and  other  subordinate 
abstractions. 

Thus  much  respecting  Causation  as  a  conception  of 
the  mind.  The  law  of  Cause  and  Effect  in  its  objective 
aspect,  as  the  fundamental  principle  in  the  order  of  the 
universe,  the  basis  of  most  of  our  knowledge,  and  the 
guide  of  all  our  action,  has  been  so  fully  treated  in  its 
numerous  bearings  in  my  System  of  Logic,  that  it  is 
needless  for  me  to  speak  further  of  it  here. 


380 


CHAPTER  XVIT. 


THE   DOCTRINE    OF   CONCEPTS,    OR    GENERAL    NOTIONS. 

We  now  arrive  at  the  questions  which  form  the  transi- 
tion from  Psychology  to  Logic — from  the  analysis  and 
laws  of  the  mental  operations,  to  the  theory  of  the  as- 
certainment of  objective  truth  :  the  natural  link  between 
the  two  being  the  theory  of  the  particular  mental  ope- 
rations whereby  truth  is  ascertained  or  authenticated. 
According  to  the  common  classification,  from  which  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  does  not  deviate,  these  operations  are  three  : 
Conception,  or  the  formation  of  General  Notions  ;  Judg- 
ment ;  and  Reasoning.     We  begin  with  the  first. 

On  this  subject  two  questions  present  themselves  :  first, 
whether  there  are  such  things  as  General  Notions,  and 
secondly,  what  they  are.  If  there  are  General  Notions, 
they  must  be  the  notions  which  are  expressed  by  general 
terms  ;  and  concerning  general  terms,  all  who  have  the 
most  elementary  knowledge  of  the  history  of  metaphysics 
are  aware  that  there  are,  or  once  were,  three  dift'erent 
opinions. 

The  first  is  that  of  the  Realists,  vvho  maintained  that 
General  Names  are  the  names  of  General  Things.  Be- 
sides individual  things,  they  recognised  another  kind  of 
Things,  not  individual,  which  they  technically  called 
iSecond  Substances,  or  Universals  a  parte  rei.  Over  and 
above  all  individual  men  and  women,  there  was  an  entity 
called  Man — Man  in  general,  which  inhered  in  the  in- 
dividual men  and  women,  and  communicated  to  them  its 
essence.  These  Universal  Substances  they  considered  to 
be  a  much  more  dignified  kind  of  beings  than  individual 
substances,  and  the  only  ones  the  cognizance  of  which 


CONCEPTS  OR  GENERAL  NOTIONS.  381 

deserved  the  names  of  Science  and  Knowledge.  Indi- 
vidual existences  were  fleeting  and  perishable,  but  the 
beings  called  Genera  and  Species  were  immortal  and 
unchangeable. 

This,  the  most  prevalent  philosophical  doctrine  of  the 
middle  ages,  is  now  universally  abandoned,  but  remains 
a  fact  of  great  significance  in  the  history  of  philosophy  ; 
being  one  of  the  most  striking  examples  of  the  tendency 
of  the  human  mind  to  infer  difference  of  things  from 
difference  of  names, — to  suppose  that  every  different  class 
of  names  implied  a  corresponding  class  of  real  entities  to 
be  denoted  by  them.  Having  two  such  different  names 
as  "  man"  and  "  Socrates,"  these  inquirers  thought  it 
quite  out  of  the  question  that  man  should  only  be  a 
name  for  Socrates,  and  others  like  him,  regarded  in  a 
particular  light.  Man,  being  a  name  common  to  many, 
must  be  the  name  of  a  substance  common  to  many,  and 
in  mystic  union  with  the  individual  substances,  Socrates 
and  the  rest. 

In  the  latter  middle  ages  there  grew  up  a  rival  school 
of  metaph3'sicians,  termed  Nominalists,  who  repudiating 
Universal  Substances,  held  that  there  is  nothing  general 
except  names.  A  name,  they  said,  is  general,  if  it  is 
applied  in  the  same  acceptation  to  a  plurality  of  things ; 
but  every  one  of  the  things  is  individual  The  dispute 
between  tliese  two  sects  of  philosophers  was  very  bitter, 
and  assumed  the  character  of  a  religious  quarrel :  autho- 
rity, too,  interfered  in  it,  and  as  usual  on  the  wrong  side. 
The  Realist  theory  was  represented  as  the  orthodox 
doctrine,  and  belief  in  it  was  imposed  as  a  religious  duty. 
It  could  not,  however,  permanently  resist  philosophical 
criticism,  and  it  perished.  But  it  did  not  leave  Nomi- 
nalism in  possession  of  the  field.  A  third  doctrine 
arose,  which  endeavoured  to  steer  between  the  two. 
According  to  this,  which  is  known  by  the  name  of  Con- 
ceptualism,  generality  is  not  an  attribute  solely  of  names, 
but  also  of  thoughts.  External  objects  indeed  are  all 
individual,  but  to  every  general  name  corresponds  a 
General  Notion,  or  Conception,   called   by    Locke  and 


382  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  CONCEPTS 

others  an  Abstract  Idea.     General  Names  are  the  names 
of  these  Abstract  Ideas. 

Realism  being:  no  longer  extant,  nor  likely  to  be  re- 
vived, the  contest  at  present  is  between  Nominalism  and 
Conceptualism  ;  each  of  which  counts  illustrious  names 
among  its  modern  adherents.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  pro- 
fesses allegiance  to  both,  affirming*  "that  the  opposing 
parties  are  really  at  one."  But  his  general  mode  of 
thought,  and  habitual  phraseology,  are  purely  Concep- 
tualist.  This  is  already  apparent  in  the:  passage  I  shall 
first  quote,  which  contains  his  statement  of  the  fact  to 
be  explained.  It  is  preceded  by  a  remark  on  Abstraction 
which  is  perfectly  just,  and  throws  great  light  on  the 
processes  of  human  thought.  Abstraction,  he  says,t  is 
simply  the  concentration  of  our  attention  on  a  particular 
object,  or  a  particular  quality  of  an  object,  and  diversion 
of  it  from  everything  else.  There  may  be  abstraction, 
therefore,  without  generalization.  "  The  notion  of  the 
"  figure  of  the  desk  before  me  is  an  abstract  idea, — an 
"  idea  that  makes  part  of  the  total  notion  of  that  body, 
"  and  on  which  I  have  concentrated  my  attention,  in 
"  order  to  consider  it  exclusively.  This  idea  is  abstract, 
"  but  it  is  at  the  same  time  individual ;  it  represents  the 
"  figure  of  this  particular  desk,  and  not  the  figure  of  any 
"  other  body." 

There  are,  therefore,  "  individual  abstract  notions ;" 
but  there  are  also  "  Abstract  General  Notions."  These 
are  formed  "  when, J  comparing  a  number  of  ol)jects,  we 
•'  seize  on  their  resemblances  ,  when  we  concentrate  our 
"  attention  on  these  points  of  similarity,  thus  abstracting 
"  the  mind  from  a  consideration  of  their  difi'erences  ;  and 
"  when  we  irive  a  name  to  our  notion  of  that  circum- 
"  stance  in  which  they  all  agree.  The  general  notion  is 
"  thus  one  which  makes  us  know  a  quality,  property, 
"  power,  notion,  relation  ;  in  short,  any  point  of  view 
'*  under  which  we  recognise  a  plurality  of  objects  as  a 
"  unity.     It  makes  us  aware  of  a  quality,  a  point  of 

*  Lectures,  ii.  286  ;  and  foot-note  on  Reid,  p.  412. 
t  Ibid.  ii.  287.  t  Ibid.  pp.  287-290. 


OR    GENERAL    NOTIONS.  3S3 

"  view,  common  to  many  things.  It  is  a  notion  of  re-^ 
"  semblance ;  hence  the  reason  why  general  names  or 
"  terms,  the  signs  of  general  notions,  have  been  called 
"  terms  of  resemblance  {termini  similitudinis).  In  this 
"  process  of  generalization,  we  do  not  stop  short  at  a 
"  first  generalization.  By  a  first  generalization  we  have 
"  obtained  a  number  of  classes  of  resembling  individuals. 
"  But  these  classes  we  can  compare  together,  observe 
"  their  similarities,  abstract  from  their  differences,  and 
"  bestow  on  their  common  circumstance  a  common  name. 
"  On  these  second  classes  we  can  again  perform  the  same 
"  operation,  and  thus  ascending  the  scale  of  general  no- 
"  tions,  throwing  out  of  view  always  a  greater  number 
"  of  differences,  and  seizing  always  on  fewer  similarities 
"  in  the  formation  of  our  classes,  we  arrive  at  length  at 
"  the  limit  of  our  ascent  in  the  notion  of  being  or  exis- 
"  tence.  Thus  placed  on  the  summit  of  the  scale  of 
"  classes,  we  descend  by  a  process  the  reverse  of  that  by 
"  which  we  have  ascended  ;  we  divide  and  subdivide  the 
*'  classes,  by  introducing  always  more  and  more  cha- 
"  racters,  and  laying  always  fewer  differences  aside ;  the 
"  notions  become  more  and  more  composite,  until  we  at 
"  length  arrive  at  the  individual. 

"  I  may  here  notice  that  there  is  a  twofold  quantity  to 
"  be  considered  in  notions.  It  is  evident  that,  in  pro- 
"  portion  as  the  class  is  high,  it  will,  in  the  first  place, 
"  contain  under  it  a  greater  number  of  classes,  and  in 
*'  the  second,  will  include  the  smallest  complement  of 
"  attributes.  Thus  being  or  existence  contains  under  it 
"  every  class  ;  and  yet  when  we  say  that  a  thing  exists, 
"  we  say  the  very  least  of  it  that  is  possible.  On  the 
"  other  hand,  an  individual,  though  it  contain  nothing 
"  but  itself,  involves  the  largest  amount  of  predication. 
"  For  example,  w^hen  I  say — this  is  Eichard,  I  not  only 
"  affirm  of  the  subject  every  class  from  existence  down 
"  to  man,  but  likewise  a  number  of  circumstances  proper 
"  to  Richard  as  an  individual.  Now,  the  former  of  these 
"  quantities,  the  external,  is  called  the  Extension  of  a 
"  notion  ;  the  latter,  the  internal  quantity,  is  called  its 


384  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  CONCEPTS 

"  Compreliension  or  Intension The  internal  and  ex- 

"  ternal  quantities  are  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  each  other. 
"  The  greater  the  extension,  the  less  the  comprehension  ; 
"  the  greater  the  comprehension,  the  less  the  extension." 

As  a  popular  account  of  Classification,  for  learners,  to 
be  followed  by  a  more  scientific  exposition,  this  fully 
answers  its  purpose  ;  but  it  is  expressed  in  the  common 
language  of  Conceptualists,  and  we  should  naturally  con- 
chide  from  it  that  the  author  was  a  Conceptualist.  He 
however  asserts  the  doctrine  of  the  Nominalists,  that 
there  are  no  general  notions,  and  that  the  notion  sug- 
gested by  a  general  name  is  always  singular  or  indivi- 
dual, to  be  "  not  only  true  but  self-evident."*  And  he 
quotes  as  "irrefragable"  the  argument  of  Berkeley, 
directed  against  the  very  possibility  of  Abstract  Ideas. 
The  passage  from  Berkeley  is  in  the  Introduction  to  his 
"  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,"  and  is  as  follows  : — 

"  It  is  agreed,  on  all  hands,  that  the  qualities  or  modes 
"  of  things,  do  never  really  exist  each  of  them  apart  by 
*'  itself,  and  separated  from  all  others,  but  are  mixed,  as 
"  it  were,  and  blended  together,  several  in  the  same 
"  object.  But,  we  are  told,  the  mind,  being  able  to  con- 
"  sider  each  quality  singly,  or  abstracted  from  those  other 
"  qualities  with  which  it  is  united,  does  by  that  means 
"  frame  to  itself  abstract  ideas.  For  example,  there  is 
"  perceived  by  sight  an  object  extended,  coloured,  and 
"  moved  ;  this  mixed  or  compound  idea  the  mind  resolv- 
"  ing  into  its  simple  constituent  parts,  and  viewing  each 
"  by  itself,  exclusive  of  the  rest,  does  frame  the  abstract 
"  ideas  of  extension,  colour,  and  motion.  Not  that  it  is 
"  possible  for  colour  or  motion  to  exist  without  exten- 
"  sion  ;  but  only  that  the  mind  can  frame  to  itself  by 
"  abstraction  the  idea  of  colour  exclusive  of  extension, 
"  and  of  motion  exclusive  of  both  colour  and  extension. 

"  Again,  the  mind  having  observed  that  in  the  par- 
"  ticular  extensions  perceived  by  sense,  there  is  some- 
"  thing  common  and  alike  in  all,  and  some  other  things 

•  Lectures,  ii.  298. 


OR    GENERAL    NOTIONS.  3S6 

"  peculiar,  as  this  or  that  figure  or  magnitude,  which 
"  distinguish  them  one  from  another ;  it  considers  apart 
"  or  singles  out  by  itself  that  which  is  common,  making 
"  thereof  a  most  abstract  idea  of  extension,  which  is 
"  neither  line,  surface,  nor  solid,  nor  has  any  figure  or 
"  magnitude,  but  is  an  idea  entirely  prescinded  from  all 
"  these.  So,  likewise,  the  mind,  by  leaving  out  of  the 
"  particular  colours  perceived  by  sense,  that  which  dis- 
"  tinguishes  them  one  from  another,  and  retaining  that 
"  only  which  is  common  to  all,  makes  an  idea  of  colour 
"  in  abstract,  which  is  neither  red,  nor  blue,  nor  white, 
'*  nor  any  other  determinate  colour.  And,  in  like  man- 
"  ner,  by  considering  motion  abstractedly  not  only  from 
"  the  body  moved,  but  likewise  from  the  figure  it  de- 
"  scribes,  and  all  particular  directions  and  velocities,  the 
"  abstract  idea  of  motion  is  framed ;  which  equally  cor- 
"  responds  to  all  particular  motions  whatever  that  may 
"  be  perceived  by  sense. 

"  Whether  others  have  this  wonderful  faculty  of  ab- 
"  stracting  their  ideas,  they  best  can  tell ;  for  myself  I 
"  find,  indeed,  I  have  a  faculty  of  imagining,  or  repre- 
"  senting  to  myself  the  ideas  of  those  particular  things 
"  1  have  perceived,  and  of  variously  compounding  and 
"dividing  them.  I  can  imagine  a  man  with  two  heads, 
"  or  the  upper  part  of  a  man  joined  to  the  body  of  a 
"  horse.  I  can  consider  the  hand,  the  eye,  the  nose, 
"  each  by  itself  abstracted  or  separated  from  the  rest  of 
"  the  body.  But  then  whatever  hand  or  eye  I  imagine, 
"  it  must  have  some  particular  shape  and  colour.  Like- 
"  wise  the  idea  of  man  that  I  frame  to  myself,  must  be 
"  either  of  a  white,  or  a  black,  or  a  tawny,  a  straight,  or 
"  a  crooked,  a  tall,  or  a  low,  or  a  middle-sized  man.  I 
"  cannot  by  any  effort  of  thought  conceive  the  abstract 
"  idea  above  described.  And  it  is  equally  impossible 
"  for  me  to  form  the  abstract  idea  of  motion  distinct 
"  from  the  body  moving,  and  which  is  neither  swift  nor 
"  slow,  curvilinear  nor  rectilinear ;  and  the  like  may  be 
*'  said  of  all  other  abstract  general  ideas  whatsoever.  To 
"  be  plain,  I  am  myself  able  to  abstract  in  one  sense,  as 

.  c  c 


386  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  GONCEPTS 

"  when  T  consider  some  particular  parts  or  qualities 
"  separated  from  others,  with  which  though  they  are 
^'  united  in  some  object,  yet  it  is  possible  they  may 
"  really  exist  without  them.  But  I  deny  that  I  can 
**  abstract  one  from  another,  or  conceive  separately,  those 
"  qualities  which  it  is  impossible  should  exist  so  sepa- 
"  rated ;  or  that  I  can  frame  a  general  notion  b}^  ab- 
*'  stracting  from  particulars  in  the  manner  aforesaid. 
"  Which  two  last  are  the  proper  acceptations  of  abstrac- 
"  Hon.  And  there  are  grounds  to  think  most  men  will 
"  acknowledge  themselves  to  be  in  my  case."  It  is 
evident,  indeed,  that  the  existence  of  Abstract  Ideas — 
the  conception  of  the  class-qualities  by  themselves,  and 
not  as  embodied  in  an  individual — is  effectually  pre- 
cluded by  the  law  of  Inseparable  Association. 

In  what  manner,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  manages  to  com- 
bine two  theories,  which  in  words  are,  and  in  substance 
have  always  been  believed  to  be,  directly  contradictory 
of  one  another,  we  learn  only  from  his  Lectures  on 
Logic.  The  hearers  of  those  on  MetaphysicSj  unless  the 
Professor  supplied  oral  elucidations  which  do  not  appear 
in  the  text,  must  have  been  considerably  puzzled  by 
finding  the  task  of  reconciling  the  two  doctrines  thrown 
entirely  on  themselves.  In  the  Lectures  on  Logic,  how- 
ever, an  attempt  is  made  to  perform  it  for  them.  It  is 
there  stated,*  that  the  General  Notion,  which  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  terms  a  Concept,  and  which  is  the  notion  we 
form  of  some  "  point  of  similarity"  between  individual 
objects,  "  is  not  cognizable  in  itself,  that  is,  it  affords  no 
"  absolute  or  irrespective  object  of  knowledge,  but  can 
"  only  be  realized  in  consciousness  by  applying  it  as  a 
"  term  of  relation,  to  one  or  more  of  the  objects,  which 
'*  agree  in  the  point  or  points  of  resemblance  whicli  it 
"  expresses.  .  .  .  The  moment  we  attempt  to  represent 
''  to  ourselves  any  of  these  concepts,  any  of  these  ab- 
''  stract  generalities,  as  absolute  objects,  by  themselves, 
''  and  out  of  relation  to  any  concrete  or  individual 
''  realities,  their  relative  nature  at  once  reappears  ;  for 

♦  Lectures,  iii.  128,  129. 


OR    GENERAL    NOTIONS.  387 

"  we  find  it  altogether  impossible  to  represent  any  of  the 
"  qualities  expressed  by  a  concept,  except  as  attached  to 
"  some  individual  and  determinate  object,  and  their  whole 
"  generality  consists  in  this,  that  though  we  must  realize 
"  them  in  thought  under  some  singular  of  the  class,  we 
"  may  do  it  under  any.  Thus,  for  example,  we  cannot 
"  actually  represent  the  bundle  of  attributes  contained 
"  in  the  concept  man  as  an  absolute  object  by  itself,  and 
"  apart  from  all  that  reduces  it  from  a  general  cognition 
"  to  an  individual  representation.  We  cannot  figure  in 
*'  imagination  any  object  adequate  to  the  general  notion 
"  or  term  man ;  for  the  man  to  be  here  imagined  must 
"  be  neither  tall  nor  short,  neither  fat  nor  lean,  neither 
"  black  nor  white,  neither  man  nor  woman,  neither  young 
"  nor  old,  but  all  and  yet  none  of  these  at  once.  The 
"  relativity  of  our  concepts  is  thus  shown  in  the  contra- 
"  diction  and  absurdity  of  the  opposite  hypothesis." 

This  is  sound  doctrine  but  it  is  pure  Nominalism; 
as  the  passage  first  quoted  from  our  author  was  pure  Con- 
ceptualism.  It  is  very  necessary  that  I  should  quote 
the  additional  elucidations  given  in  the  succeeding  Lec- 
ture.* A  Concept  or  (General)  Notion,  he  there  says, 
is  in  this  distinguished  from  a  "  Presentation  of  Per- 
*'  ception,  or  Representation  of  Phantasy,"  that  "  our 
"  knowledge  through  either  of  the  latter  is  a  direct,  im- 
"  mediate,  irresj)ective,  determinate,  individual,  and  ade- 
'*  quate  cognition  ;  that  is,  a  singular  or  individual  object 
"  is  known  in  itself,  by  itself,  through  all  its  attributes, 
"  and  without  reference  to  aught  but  itself.  A  concept, 
"  on  the  contrary,  is  an  indirect,  mediate,  indeterminate, 
"  and  partial  cognition  of  any  one  of  a  number  of  objects, 
"  but  not  an  actual  representation  either  of  them  all,  or 
*'  of  the  whole  attributes  of  any  one  object 

"  Formed  by  comparison,"  concepts  "  express  only  a 
"  relation.  Tliey  cannot,  therefore,  be  held  up  as  an 
"  absolute  object  to  consciousness — they  cannot  be  repre- 
"  sented  as  universals,  in  imagination.  They  can  only 
"  be  thought  of  in  relation  to  some  one  of  the  individual 

♦  Lectures,  iii.  131-137. 

c  c  2 


38S  THE    DOCTRINE   OF    CONCEPTS 

"  objects  they  classify,  and  when  viewed  in  relation  to  it 
"  they  can  be  represented  in  imagination ;  but  then,  as 
"  actually  represented,  they  no  longer  constitute  general 
"  attributions,  they  fall  back  into  mere  special  determi- 
"  nations  of  the  individual  object  in  which  they  are 
"  represented.  Thus  it  is,  that  the  generality  or  uni- 
"  versality  of  concepts  is  potential,  not  actual.  They 
"  are  only  generals  inasmuch  as  they  may  be  applied  to 
"  any  of  the  various  objects  they  contain  ;  but  while  they 
"  cannot  be  actually  elicited  into  consciousness,  except  in 
"  application  to  some  one  or  other  of  these,  so  they 
"  cannot  be  so  applied  without  losing,  pro  tanto,  their 
"  universality.  Take,  for  example,  the  concept  horse. 
"  In  so  far  as  by  horse  we  merely  think  of  the  word,  that 
*'  is,  of  the  combination  formed  by  the  letters  h,  o,  r,  s,  e, 
"  — this  is  not  a  concept  at  all,  as  it  is  a  mere  representa- 
"  tion  of  certain  individual  objects.  This  I  only  state 
"  and  eliminate,  in  order  that  no  possible  ambiguity 
"  should  be  allowed  to  lurk.  By  horse,  then,  meaning 
"  not  merely  a  representation  of  the  word,  but  a  concept 
"  relative  to  certain  objects  classed  under  it, — the  con- 
"  cept  horse,  I  say,  cannot,  if  it  remain  a  concept,  that  is, 
"  a  universal  attribution,  be  represented  in  imagination; 
"  but,  except  it  be  represented  in  imagination,  it  cannot 
"  be  applied  to  any  object,  and  except  it  be  so  applied,  it 
"  cannot  be  realized  in  thought  at  all.  You  may  try  to 
"  escape  the  horns  of  the  dilemma,  but  you  cannot.  You 
"  cannot  realize  in  thought  an  absolute  or  irrespective 
"  concept,  corresponding  in  universality  to  the  application 
"  of  the  word ;  for  the  supposition  of  this  involves  nu- 
"  merous  contradictions.  An  existent  horse  is  not  a 
"  relation,  but  an  extended  object  possessed  of  a  deter- 
"  minate  figure,  colour,  size,  &c. ;  horse,  in  general,  cannot, 
"  therefore,  be  represented,  except  by  an  image  of  some- 
"  thing  extended  and  of  a  determinate  figure,  colour, 
"  size,  &c.  Here  now  emerges  the  contradiction.  If, 
"  on  the  one  hand,  you  do  not  represent  something  ex- 
"  tended,  and  of  a  determinate  figure,  colour,  and  size, 
"  you  have  no  representation  of  any  horse.     There  is. 


OR    GENERAL    NOTIONS.       '  3S9 

"  therefore,  in  this  alternative,  nothing  which  can  be 
"  called  the  actual  concept  or  image  of  a  horse  at  all.  If, 
"  on  the  other  hand,  you  do  represent  something  ex- 
"  tended,  and  of  a  determinate  figure,  colour,  and  size, 
"  then  you  have,  indeed,  the  image  of  an  individual 
"  horse,  but  not  a  universal  concept  coadequate  with  /torse 
"  in  general  For  how  is  it  possible  to  have  an  actual 
"  representation  of  a  figure,  which  is  not  a  determinate 
"  figure  ?  but  if  of  a  determinate  figure,  it  must  be  that 
"  of  some  one  of  the  many  different  figures  under  which 
"  horses  appear ;  but  then  if  it  be  only  of  one  of  these, 
"  it  cannot  be  the  general  concept  of  the  others,  which 
"  it  does  not  represent.  In  like  manner,  how  is  it 
"  possible  to  have  the  actual  representation  of  a  thing 
"  coloured,  which  is  not  the  representation  of  a  de- 
"  terminate  colour,  that  is,  either  white,  or  black,  or 
"  grey,  or  brown,  &c.  ?  but  if  it  be  any  one  of  these, 
"  it  can  only  represent  a  horse  of  this  or  that  particular 
"  colour,  and  cannot  be  the  general  concept  of  horses  of 
"  every  colour.  The  same  result  is  given  by  the  other 
"  attributes ;  and  what  I  originally  stated  is  thus  mani- 
"  fest — that  concepts  have  only  a  potential,  not  an  actual, 
"  universality,  that  is,  they  are  only  universal,  inasmuch 
"  as  they  may  be  applied  to  any  of  a  certain  class  of 
"  objects,  but  as  actually  applied,  they  are  no  longer 
"  general  attributions,  but  only  special  attributes." 

But  if,  as  our  author  says,  concepts  are  "  incapable  of 
being  realized  in  thought  at  all,"  except  as  representa- 
tions of  individual  objects,  how  are  they,  even  potentially, 
universal  ?  Being  mere  mental  creations,  they  are  nothing 
except  what  they  can  be  thought  as  being ;  and  they 
cannot  be  thought  as  being  universal,  but  only  as  being 
part  of  the  thought  of  an  individual  object,  though  the 
individual  object  needs  not  always  be  the  same.  This 
is  not  a  potential  universality,  though  it  is  an  universal 
potentiality.  If,  then,  the  Nominalists  are  thus  com- 
pletely right,  how  can  it  be  that  the  Conceptualists  are 
not  wrong  ? 

Our  author  thinks  that  the  apparent  difierence  between 


390  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  CONCEPTS 

them  is  a  mere  case  of  verbal  ambiguity;  arising"  from 
"  the   employment   of  the    same  terms  to  express  the 
**  representations  of  Imagination,  and  the  notions  or  con- 
"  cepts  of  tlie  Understanding."     "  A  relation,"  he  says,* 
"  cantiot    be    represented    in    imagination.      The    two 
"  terms, — the   two   relative    objects,    can    be   severally 
"  imaged  in  the  sensible  phantasy,  but  not  the  relation 
"  itself.     This  is  the  object  of  the  Comparative  Faculty, 
"  or  of  Intelligence  Proper.     To  objects  so  different  as 
"  the  images  of  sense  and  the  unpicturable  notions  of 
"  intelligence,  different  names  ought  to  be  given.''     "  In 
"  Germanyt  the    question  of  nominalism   and   concep- 
"  tualism  has  not  been  agitated,   and   why  ?      Simply 
"  because  the  German  language  supplies  terms  by  which 
"  concepts  (or  notions  of  thought  proper)  have  been  con- 
"  tradistinguished  from  the  presentations  and  representa- 
*'  tions  of  the  subsidiary  faculties."!      We  are  therefore 
to  understand  that  although   Imagination  cannot  figure 
to  itself  anything  general  or  universal,  Thought  Proper, 
or  the  Comparative  Faculty,  or  the  Understanding,  can. 
But  I  do  not  believe  that  Berkeley,  whose  argument  our 
author  declares  "  irrefragable,"  or  any  other  of  the  great 
Nominalist  thinkers  whom  he  enumerates,  would  have 
accepted    this    distinction.     They  would,  I   apprehend, 
have  denied  that  the  attributes  included  in  the  so-called 
General  Notion   can   be  thought  separately,  any   more 
than  they  can  be  imaged    separately.     But  why  do  I 
talk  of  Berkeley?     Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  himself  nega- 
tived the  distinction  in  the  very  passage  just  quoted, 
when  he  says,  "  the  concept  /wrse  cannot,  if  it  remain  a 
"  concept,  that  is,  a  universal  attribution,  be  represented 
"  in  imagination  ;  but,  except  it  he  represented  in  imagi- 
"  nation,  it  cannot  be  applied  to  any  object,  and  except 
"  it  be  so  applied,  it  cannot  be  realized  in  t/iouf//it."     The 
simple  question  is.  Can  the  attributes  of  hors>e  as  a  class 
be  objects  of  thought,  except  as  part  of  a  representation 

*  Lectures,  ii.  312.  f  Ibid.  iii.  p.  136. 

X  The  words  he  means  are  Begriflf  and  Anschauung.     See  foot-note  to 
Eeid,  p.  412. 


OR    GENERAL    NOTIONS.  391 

of  some  individual  horse  ?  If  the  Concept  cannot  exist 
in  the  mind  except  enveloped  in  the  miscellaneous  attri- 
butes of  an  individual — which  is  the  truth,  and  fully 
recognised  as  such  in  the  passages  quoted  from  Sir  W. 
Hamilton, — then  it  can  no  more  be  thought  separately 
by  the  intellect  than  depicted  separately  in  the  imagina- 
tion. 

This  notion  of  a  Concept  as  something  which  can  be 
thought,  but  "  cannot  in  itself  be  depicted  to  sense  or 
"  imagination,"*  is  supported,  as  we  saw,  by  calling  it 
a  relation.  "  As  the  result  of  a  comparison,"  a  concept 
"  necessarilyf  expresses  a  relation  :"  and  a  "  relation 
cannot  be  represented  in  imagination."  If  a  concept 
is  a  relation,  what  relation  is  it,  and  between  what? 
*'  As  the  result  of  a  comparison,"  it  must  be  a  relation 
of  resemblance  among  the  things  compared.  I  might 
observe  that  a  concept,  which  is  defined  by  our  author 
himself  "  a  bundle  of  attributes,"  does  not  signify  the 
mere  fact  of  resemblance  between  objects  ;  it  signifies  our 
mental  representation  of  that  in  which  they  resemble ; 
of  the  "  common  circumstance"  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
spoke  of  in  his  exposition  of  Classification.  The  attri- 
butes are  not  the  relation,  they  are  the  fundamentum 
relationu.  This  objection,  however,  I  can  afford  to  wave. 
However  inappropriate  the  expression,  let  us  admit  that 
a  concept  is  a  relation.  But  if  a  relation  cannot  be 
represented  in  imagination,  our  author  has  just  said  that 
"  the  two  terms,  the  two  reJa^ve  objects,"  can.  The 
relation,  according  to  him,  though  it  cannot  be  imagined, 
can  be  thought.  But  can  a  relation  be  thought  without 
thinking  the  related  objects  between  which  it  exists? 
Assuredly,  no  :  and  this  impossibility  can  the  less  be 
denied  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  as  it  is  the  basis  on  which  he 

*  Mansel,  Prolegomena  Logica,  p.  16.  What  a  mere  play  upon  words 
the  distinction  is,  is  shown  by  Mr.  Mansel's  saying,  a  few  pages  later, 
(p.  29),  "  In  every  complete  act  of  conception,  the  attributes  forming  the 
concept  are  contemplated  as  co-existing  in  a  possible  object  of  intuition," 
So  that  they  are  "depicted  to  imagination;"  only  they  are  not  depicted 
separately. 

t  Lectures,  iii.  128. 


392  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  CONCEPTS 

founds  his  theory  of  Consciousness — of  the  direct  appre- 
hension of  the  Ego  and  the  Non-ego.  Consequently, 
when  we  think  a  relation,  we  must  think  it  as  existing 
between  some  particular  objects  which  we  think  along 
with  it :  and  a  Concept,  even  if  it  be  the  apprehending 
of  3l  relation,  can  only  be  thought  as  individual,  not  as 
general. 

The  true  theory  of  Concepts  needs  not,  I  think,  be 
sought  farther  off'  than  in  our  author's  own  account  of 
their  origin.  "  In  the  formation,"  he  says,*  "  of  a  con-> 
"  cept  or  notion,  the  process  may  be  analysed  into  four 
"  momenta.  In  the  first  place,  we  must  have  a  plurality 
"  of  objects  presented  or  represented  by  the  subsidiary 
"  faculties.  These  faculties  must  furnish  the  rude  ma- 
"  terial  for  elaboration.  In  the  second  place,  the  objects 
"  thus  applied  are,  by  an  act  of  the  Understanding,  com- 
"  pared  together,  and  their  several  qualities  judged  to  be 
"  similar  or  dissimilar.  In  the  third  place,  an  act  of 
"  volition,  called  Attention,  concentrates  consciousness 
"  on  the  qualities  thus  recognised  as  similar ;  and  that 
"  concentration,  by  attention,  on  them,  involves  an 
"  abstraction  of  consciousness  from  those  which  have 
"  been  recognised  and  thrown  aside  as  dissimilar  ;  for 
"  the  power  of  consciousness  is  limited,  and  it  is  clear  or 
"  vivid  precisely  in  proportion  to  the  simplicity  or  one- 
"  ness  of  the  object.  Attention  and  Abstraction  are  the 
"  two  poles  of  the  same  act  of  thought :  they  are  like  the 
"  opposite  scales  in  a  balance,  the  one  must  go  up  as  the 
"  other  goes  down.  In  the  fourth  place,  the  qualities, 
"  which  by  comparison  are  judged  similar,  and  by  at- 
"  tention  are  constituted  into  an  exclusive  object  of 
"  thought, — these  are  already,  by  this  process,  identified 
"in  consciousness;  for  they  are  only  judged  similar, 
*'  inasmuch  as  they  produce  in  us  indiscernible  effects. 
"  Their  synthesis  in  consciousness  may,  however,  for 
"  precision's  sake,  be  stated  as  a  fourth  step  in  the  pro- 
"  cess.  But  it  must  be  remembered,  that  at  least  the 
"  three  latter  steps  are  not  in  reality,  distinct  and  inde- 
*  Lectures,  iii.,  132, 133. 


OR    GENERAL    NOTIONS.  393 

"  pendent  acts,  but  are  only  so  di<?tinguished  and  stated, 
"  in  order  to  enable  us  to  comprehend  and  speak  about 
"  the  indivisible  operation  in  the  different  aspects  in 
"  which  we  may  consider  it."  Let  me  remark,  in  pass- 
ing, the  fresh  recognition  in  the  last  sentence,  of  an 
important  principle,  already  several  times  advei-ted  to, 
in  the  theory  of  Naming. 

The  formation,  therefore,  of  a  Concept,  does  not  con- 
sist in  separating  the  attributes  which  are  said  to  com- 
pose it,  from  all  other  attributes  of  the  same  object, 
and  enabling  us  to  conceive  those  attributes,  disjoined 
from  any  others.  We  neither  conceive  them,  nor  think  1  ^. 
them,  nor  cognise  them  in  any  way,  as  a  thing  apart,  but 
solely  as  forming,  in  combination  with  numerous  other 
attributes,  the  idea  of  an  individual  object.  But,  though 
thinking  them  only  as  part  of  a  larger  agglomeration,  we 
have  the  power  of  fixing  our  attention  on  them,  to  the 
neglect  of  the  other  attributes  with  which  we  think 
them  combined.  While  the  concentration  of  attention 
actually  lasts,  if  it  is  sufficiently  intense,  we  may  be  tem- 
porarily unconscious  of  any  of  the  other  attributes,  and 
may  really,  for  a  brief  interval,  have  nothing  present  to 
our  mind  but  the  attributes  constituent  of  the  concept. 
In  general,  however,  the  attention  is  not  so  completely 
exclusive  as  this ;  it  leaves  room  in  consciousness  for 
other  elements  of  the  concrete  idea  :  though  of  these  the 
consciousness  is  faint,  in  proportion  to  the  energy  of  the 
concentrative  effort ;  and  the  moment  the  attention  re- 
laxes, if  the  same  concrete  idea  continues  to  be  con- 
templated, its  other  constituents  come  out  into  con- 
sciousness. General  concepts,  therefore,  we  have,  properly 
speaking,  none ;  we  have  only  complex  ideas  of  objects 
in  the  concrete  :  but  we  are  able  to  attend  exclusively  to 
certain  parts  of  the  concrete  idea  :  and  by  that  exclusive  at- 
tention, we  enable  those  parts  to  determine  exclusively  the 
course  of  our  thoughts  as  subsequently  called  up  by  asso- 
ciation; and  are  in  a  condition  to  carry  on  a  train  of  medi- 
tation or  reasoning  relating  to  those  parts  only,  exactly  as 
if  we  were  able  to  conceive  them  separately  from  the  rest. 


394  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  CONCEPTS 

What  principally  enables  us  to  do  this  is  the  employ- 
ment of  signs,  and  particularly  the  most  efficient  and 
familiar  kind  of  signs,  viz.  Names.  This  is  a  point 
which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  puts  well  and  strongly,  and 
there  are  many  reasons  for  stating  it  in  his  own  lan- 
guage.* 

"  The  concept  thus  formed  by  an  abstraction  of  the 
"  resembling  from  the  non-resembling  qualities  of  ob- 
"jects,  would  again  fall  back  into  the  confusion  and 
"  infinitude  from  which  it  has  been  called  out,  were  it 
"  not  rendered  permanent  for  consciousness,  by  being 
"  fixed  and  ratified  in  a  verbal  sign.  Considered  in 
"  general,  thought  and  language  are  reciprocally  de- 
"  pendent;  each  bears  all  the  imperfections  and  per- 
"  fections  of  the  other  ;  but  without  language  there  could 
"  be  no  knowledge  realized  of  the  essential  properties 
"  of  things,  and  of  the  connexion  of  their  accidental 
"  states." 

The  rationale  of  this  is,  that  when  we  wish  to  be  able 
to  think  of  objects  in  respect  of  certain  of  their  attri- 
butes— to  recall  no  objects  but  such  as  are  invested  with 
those  attributes,  and  to  recall  them  with  our  attention 
directed  to  those  attributes  exclusively — we  effect  this  by 
giving  to  that  combination  of  attributes,  or  to  the  class 
of  objects  which  possess  them,  a  specific  Name.  We 
create  an  artificial  association  between  those  attributes 
and  a  certain  combination  of  articulate  sounds,  which 
guarantees  to  us  that  when  we  hear  the  sound,  or  see 
the  written  characters  corresponding  to  it,  there  will  be 
raised  in  the  mind  an  idea  of  some  object  possessing 
those  attributes,  in  which  idea  those  attributes  alone 
will  be  suggested  vividly  to  the  mind,  our  consciousness 
of  the  remainder  of  the  concrete  idea  being  faint.  As 
the  name  has  been  directly  associated  only  with  those 
attributes,  it  is  as  likely,  in  itself,  to  recall  them  in  any 
one  concrete  combination  as  in  any  other.  What  com- 
bination it  shall  recall  in  the  particular  case,  depends  on 
recency  of  experience,  accidents  of  memory,  or  the  in- 

*  Lectures,  iii.  137. 


OR    GENERAL    NOTIONS.  395 

fluence  of  otheT  thoughts  which  have  been  passing,  or 
are  even  then  passing,  through  the  mind  :  accordingly,  the 
combination  is  far  from  being  always  the  same,  and  sel- 
dom gets  itself  strongly  associated,  with  the  name  which 
suggests  it ;  while  the  association  of  the  name  with  the 
attributes  that  form  its  conventional  signification,  is 
constantly  becoming  stronger.  The  association  of  that 
particular  set  of  attributes  with  a  given  word,  is  what 
keeps  them  together  in  the  mind  by  a  stronger  tie  than 
that  with  which  they  are  associated  with  the  remainder 
of  the  concrete  image.  To  express  the  meaning  in  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  phraseology,  this  association  gives  them 
an  unity*  in  our  consciousness.  It  is  only  wiien  this 
has  been  accomplished,  that  we  possess  what  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  terms  a  Concept ;  and  this  is  the  whole  of  the 
mental  phsenomenon  involved  in  the  matter.  We  have 
a  concrete  representation,  certain  of  the  component  ele- 
ments of  which  are  distinguished  by  a  mark,  designating 
them  for  special  attention ;  and  this  attention,  in  cases 
of  exceptional  intensity,  excludes  all  consciousness  of 
the  others. 

Sir  VV.  Hamilton  thinks,  however,  that  we  can  form, 
though  scarcely  preserve,  concepts  without  the  aid  of 
signs.  " Language,'!  he  says,  " is  the  attribution  of 
"  signs  to  our  cognitions  of  things.  But  as  a  cognition 
"  must  have  been  already  there,  before  it  could  receive  a 
"  sign;  consequently,  that  knowledge  which  is  denoted 
"  by  the  formation  and  application  of  a  word,  must  have 

*  One  of  tlie  best  and  profoundest  passages  in  all  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
writings,  is  that  in  which  he  points  out  (though  only  incidentally)  what 
are  the  conditions  of  our  ascribing  Unity  to  any  aggregate.     "Though  it   •  /  .'  • 
"  is  only  by  experience  we  come  to  attribute  an  external  unity  to  aught    1        »,    ^  * j 
"  continuously  extended,  that  is,  consider  it  as  a  system  or  constituted    j '  ^^' 
"  whole  ;  still,  in  so  far  as  we  do  so  consider  it,  we  think  the  parts  as  held       f^'  ^  oJ»7( 
"  together  by  a  certain  force,  and  the  whole,  'therefore,  as  end!owed  with  a         4 
"  power  of  resisting  their  distraction.     It  is,  indeed,  only  by  finding  that       ■'■'''' 
"  a  material  continuity  resists  distraction,  that  we  view  it  as  more  than  a 
"  fortuitous  aggregation  of  many  bodies,  that  is,  as  a  single  body.     The 
"  material   universe,  for  example,  though  not  de  facto  continuously  ex- 
"  tended,  we  consider  as  one  system  in  so  far,  but  only  in  so  far,  as  we 
"  find  all  bodies  tending  together  by  reciprocal  attraction."     Disaerta- 
tions  on  Keid,  pp.  862,  853. 

t  Lectures,  iii.  138-140. 


396  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    CONCEPTS 

"  preceded  the  symbol  which  denotes  it."  A  sigri,  how- 
ever, he  continues,  in  one  of  his  happiest  specimens  of 
illustration,  "  is  necessary  to  give  stability  to  our  intel- 
lectual progress, —  to  establish  each  step  in  our  advance 
as  a  new  starting  point  for  our  advance  to  anotlier  be- 
yond. A  country  may  be  overrun  by  an  armed  host, 
but  it  is  only  conquered  by  the  establishment  of  for- 
tresses. Words  are  the  fortresses  of  Jhought.  They 
enable  us  to  realize  our  dominion  over  what  we  have 
already  overrun  in  thought ;  to  make  every  intellectual 
conquest  the  basis  of  operations  for  others  still  beyond. 
Or  another  illustration  :  You  have  all  heard  of  the  pro- 
cess of  tunnellino^ — of  tunnellinof  throus^h  a  sand-bank. 
In  this  operation  it  is  impossible  to  succeed,  unless 
every  foot,  nay  almost  every  inch  in  our  progress,  be 
secured  by  an  arch  of  masonry,  before  we  attempt  the 
excavation  of  another.  Now,  language  is  to  the  mind 
'  precisely  what  the  arch  is  to  the  tunnel.  The  power  of 
'  thinking  and  the  power  of  excavation  are  not  depen- 
'  dent  on  the  word  in  the  one  case,  on  the  mason-work 
'  in  the  other;  but  without  these  subsidiaries,  neither 
'  process  could  be  carried  on  beyond  its  rudimentary 
*  commencement.  Though,  therefore,  we  allow  that 
'  every  movement  forward  in  language  must  be  deter- 
'  mined  by  an  antecedent  movement  forward  in  thought ; 
'  still,  unless  thought  be  accompanied  at  each  point  of 
'  its  evolution,  by  a  corresponding  evolution  of  language, 
'  its  further  development  is  arrested.  ....  Admitting 
'  even  that  the  mind  is  capable  of  certain  elementary 
'  concepts  without  the  fixation  and  signature  of  lan- 
'  guage,  still  these  are  but  sparks  which  would  twinkle 
'  only  to  expire,  and  it  requires  words  to  give  them  pro- 
'  minence,  and  by  enabling  us  to  collect  and  elaborate 
'  them  into  new  concepts,  to  raise  out  of  what  would 
'  otherwise  be  only  scattered  and  transitory  scintillations, 
'  a  vivid  and  enduring  light." 

Mr.  Mansel,  who  agrees  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton  in  the 
essentials  of  his  doctrine  of  Concepts,  goes  beyond  him 
on  this  point,  being  of  opinion  that  without  signs  we 


OR    GENERAL   NOTIONS.  397 

could  not  form  concepts  at  all.  The  objection,  that  we 
must  have  had  the  concept  before  we  could  have  given  it 
a  name,  he  meets  by  the  suggestion  that  names  when 
first  used  are  names  only  of  individual  objects,  but  being 
extended  from  one  object  to  another  under  the  law  of 
Association  by  Resemblance,  they  become  specially  asso- 
ciated with  the  points  of  Eesemblance,  and  thus  gene- 
rate the  Concept.  In  Mr.  Mansel's  opinion,*  no  one, 
"  without  the  aid  of  symbols,"  can  advance  "  beyond  the 
"  individual  objects  of  sense  or  imagination.  In  the  pre- 
"  sence  of  several  individuals  of  the  same  species,  the 
"  eye  may  observe  points  of  similarity  between  them  ; 
"  and  in  this  no  symbol  is  needed;  but  every  feature 
"  thus  observed  is  the  distinct  attribute  of  a  distmct  indi- 
"  vidual,  and  however  similar,  cannot  be  regarded  as 
"  identical.  For  example :  I  see  lying  on  the  table  be- 
"  fore  me  a  number  of  shillings  of  the  same  coinage. 
"  Examined  severally,  the  image**  and  superscription  of 
**  each  is  undistinguishable  from  that  of  its  fellow  ;  but 
"  in  viewing  them  side  by  side,  space  is  a  necessary  con- 
"  dition  of  my  perception,  and  the  difference  of  locality 
"  is  sufficient  to  make  them  distinct,  though  similar  in- 
**  dividuals.  The  same  is  the  case  with  any  representa- 
"  tive  image,  whether  in  a  mirror,  in  a  painting,  or  in 
"  the  imagination,  waking  or  dreaming.  It  can  only  be 
"  depicted  as  occupying  a  certain  place ;  and  thus  as  an 
"  individual,  and  the  representative  of  an  individual.  It 
"  is  true  that  I  cannot  say  that  it  represents  this  particu- 
"  lar  coin  rather  than  that ;  and  consequently  it  may  be 
"  considered  as  the  representative  of  all,  successively  but 
"  not  simultaneously.  To  find  a  representative  which 
"  shall  embrace  all  at  once,  I  must  divest  it  of  the  con- 
"  dition  of  occupying  space;  and  this,  experience  assures 
"  us  can  only  be  done  by  means  of  symbuU,  verbal  or 
"  other,  by  which  the  concept  is  fixed  in  the  undei  stand- 
**  ing.  Such,  for  example,  is  a  verbal  description  of  the 
*'  coin  in  question,  which  contains  a  collection  of  attributes 
"  freed  from  the  condition  of  locality,  and  hence  from  all 

*  Prolegomena  Logica,  pp.  15-17. 


398  THE    DOCTRINE    OF   CONCEPTS 

"  resemblance  to  an  object  of  sense.  If  we  substitute 
"  Time  for  Space,  the  same  remarks  will  be  equally  appli- 
"  cable  to  the  objects  of  our  internal  consciousness. 
"  Every  appetite  and  desire,  every  affection  and  volition,  as 
'''presented,  is  an  individual  state  of  consciousness,  distin- 
"  guisbed  from  every  other  by  its  relation  to  a  different 
"  period  of  time.  States  in  other  respects  exactly  similar 
"  may  succeed  one  another  at  regular  intervals ;  but  the 
"  hunger  which  I  feel  to-day  is  an  individual  feeling  as 
"  numerically  distinct  from  that  which  I  felt  yesterday 
"  or  that  which  I  shall  feel  to-morrow,  as  a  shilling  lying 
"  in  my  pocket  is  from  a  similar  shilling  lying  at  the 
"  bank.  Whereas  my  notion  of  hunger,  or  fear,  or  voli- 
"  tion,  is  a  general  concept,  having  no  relation  to  one 
"  period  of  time  rather  than  to  another,  and,  as  such, 
"  requires,  like  other  concepts,  a  representative  sign. 
"  Language,  taking  the  word  in  its  widest  sense,  is  thus 
"  indispensable,  not  merely  to  the  communication,  but  to 
"  the  formation  of  Thought." 

This  is  a  step  in  advance  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  doc- 
trine, but  is  open  to  the  same  criticism,  namely,  that 
after  showing  all  Concepts  to  be  concrete  and  individual, 
it  endeavours  to  make  out  by  an  indirect  process,  a 
sort  of  abstract  existence  for  them.  According  to  Mr. 
Mansel,  signs  are  necessary  to  concepts,  because  signs 
alone  can  give  this  abstract  existence.  Signs  are  wanted, 
to  emancipate  our  mental  apprehension  from  the  condi- 
tions of  space  and  time  which  are  in  all  our  concrete 
representations.  The  other  miscellaneous  attributes 
which  have  to  be  cast  out,  do  not,  he  seems  to  think, 
embarrass  the  formation  of  the  Concept ;  but  it  is  ham- 
pered by  the  conditions  of  space  and  time,  and  only  by 
means  of  a  sign  can  we  get  rid  of  these.  But  do  we  -. 
get  rid  of  them  by  employing  signs  ?  To  take  Mr. 
Mansel's  own  instance  :  When  we  establish  our  concept 
of  a  shilling  by  a  verbal  description  of  the  coin,  does 
the  description  enable  us  to  conceive  a  shilling  as  not 
occupying  any  space?  When  we  think  of  a  shilling, 
either  by  name  or  anonymously,  is  not  the  circumstance 


OE   GENERAL    NOTIONS.  399 

of  occupying  space  called  up  as  an  inevitable  part  of  the 
mental  representation  ?  Not,  indeed,  the  circumstance 
of  occupying  a  given  part  of  space ;  but  if  that  is  what 
Mr.  Mansel  means,  it  would  follow  that  we  need  signs 
to  enable  us  to  form  a  mental  representation  even  of  an 
individual  object,  provided  it  be  moveable :  for  the  same 
object  does  not  always  occupy  the  same  part  of  space. 
The  truth  is,  that  the  condition  of  space  cannot  be  ex- 
cluded ;  it  is  an  essential  part  of  the  concept  of  Bod}^ 
and  of  every  kind  of  bodies.  But  any  given  space,  or 
any  given  time,  is  not  a  part  of  the  concept,  any  more 
than  any  of  the  slight  peculiarities  in  which  one  shil- 
ling differs  from  another  are  part  of  the  concept  of  a 
shilling.  Some  space  and  time,  and  some  individual 
peculiarities,  are  always  thought  along  with  the  concept, 
and  make  up  the  whole,  of  which  it  can  only  be  thought 
as  a  part :  but  these  are  not  directly  recalled  by  the 
class-name,  and  the  attributes  composing  the  concept 
are.  Mr.  Mansel,  therefore,  has  not,  I  conceive,  hit  the 
mark :  but  in  the  passages  which  follow,  there  is  real 
power  of  metaphysical  discrimination. 

'^  Observe*  what  actually  takes  place  in  the  formation 
"  of  language  and  thought  among  ourselves.  To  the 
"  child  learning  to  speak,  words  are  not  the  signs  of 
"  thoughts,  but  of  intuitions  :t  the  words  man  and  horse 
"  do  not  represent  a  collection  of  attributes,  but  are  only 
"  the  name  of  the  individual  now  before  him.  It  is  not 
"  until  the  name  has  been  successively  appropriated  to 
"  various  individuals,  that  reflection  begins  to  inquire 
"  into  the  common  features  of  the  class.  Language, 
"  therefore,  as  taught  to  the  infant,  is  chronologically 
"  prior  to  thought  and  posterior  to  sensation.  In  inquir- 
"  ing  how  far  the  same  process  can  account  for  the 
"  invention  of  language,  which  now  takes  place  in  the 
"  learning  it,  the  real  question  at  issue  is  simply  this. 
"  Is  the  act  of  giving  names  to  individual  objects  of  sense ^ 

*  Prolegomena  Lo^ca,  pp.  19,  20,  and  29-31. 
f  By  intuitions  Mr.  Manael  means  the  Ansclianungen  of  Kant,  or  what 
Mr.  Mansel  himself  otherwise  calls  Presentations  of  Sense,  to  which  he 
adds  Representations  of  Imagination. 


400  THE    DOCTRINE   OF    CONCEPTS 

"  a  thing-  so  completely  beyond  the  power  of  a  man 
"  created  in  the  full  maturity  of  his  faculties,  that  we 
"  must  suppose  a  Divine  Instructor  performing  precisely 
"  the  same  office  as  is  now  performed  for  the  infant  by 
"  his  mother  or  his  nurse ;  teaching  him,  that  is,  to 
"  associate  this  sound  with  tJiis  sight  ?  .  .  .  .  All  con- 
"  cepts  are  formed  by  means  of  signs  which  have 
"  previously  been  representative  of  individual  objects 
*^  only.  .  .  .  Similarities  are  noticed  earlier  than  dif- 
"  ferences :  and  our  first  abstractions  may  be  said  to  be 
"  performed  for  us,  as  we  learn  to  give  the  same  name 
'^  to  individuals  presented  to  us  under  slight,  and  at  first 
"  unnoticed,  circumstances  of  distiaction.  The  same 
"  name  is  thus  applied  to  different  objects,  long  before 
"  we  learn  to  analj^se  the  growing  powers  of  speech  and 
"  thought,  to  ask  what  we  mean  by  each  several  instance 
"  of  its  application,  to  correct  and  fix  the  signification 
"  of  words  used  at  first  vaguely  and  obscurely.  To 
"  point  out  each  successive  stage  of  the  process  by  which 
*^  signs  of  intuition  become  gradually  signs  of  thought, 
"  is  as  impossible  as  to  point  out  the  several  moments 
"  at  which  the  growing  child  receives  each  successive 
"  increase  of  his  stature." 

These  remarks  of  Mr.  Mansel  remove,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  the  only  real  argument  for  the  supposition  that  Con- 
cepts, or  what  are  called  Ueneral  Notions,  are  formed 
without  the  aid  of  signs.  But  the  counter-doctrine 
must  be  received  with  an  important  reservation.  Signs 
are  necessary,  but  the  signs  need  not  be  artificial ;  there 
are  such  things  as  natural  signs.  The  only  reality  there 
is  in  the  Concept  is,  that  we  are  somehow  enabled  and 
led,  not  once  or  accidentally,  but  in  the  common  course 
.  of  our  thoughts,  to  attend  specially,  and  more  or  less 
exclusively,  to  certain  parts  of  the  presentation  of  sense 
or  representation  of  imagination  which  we  are  conscious 
of.  Now,  what  is  there  to  make  us  do  this  ?  There  must 
be  something  which,  as  often  as  it  recurs  either  to  our 
senses  or  to  our  thoughts,  directs  our  attention  to  those 
particular  elements  in  the  perception  or  in  ihe  idea :  and 


OR  GENERAL    NOTIONS. 


401 


whatever  performs  this  office  is  virtually  a  sign ;  but  it 
needs  not  be  a  word ;  the  process  certainly  takes  place, 
to  a  limited  extent,  in  the  inferior  animals ;   and  even 
with  human  beings  who  have  but  a  small  vocabulary, 
many   processes  of  thought   take   place   habitually   by 
other  symbols  than  words.     It  is  a  doctrine  of  one  of 
the   most   fertile   thinkers   of  modern   times,    Auguste 
Comte,  that  besides  the  logic  of  signs,  there  is  a  logic 
of  images,  and  a  logic   of  i'eelings.     In    many   of  the 
familar  processes  of  thought,    and  especially  in  uncul- 
tured minds,  a  visual  image  serves  instead  of  a  word. 
Our   visual    sensations — perhaps  only  because  they  are 
almost  always  present  along  with  the  impressions  of  our 
other  senses — have  a  facility  of  becoming  associated  with 
them.     Hence,  the  characteristic  visual  appearance  of  an 
object  easily  gathers  round  it,  by  association,  the  ideas  of 
all  other  peculiarities  which  have,  in  frequent  experience, 
coexisted   with   that   appearance  :   and,  summoning  up 
these  with  a  strength  and  certainty  far  surpassing  that 
of  the    merely  casual  associations  which   it   may   also 
raise,  it  concentrates  the  attention  on  them.     This  is  an 
image    serving  for  a  sign — the   logic   of  images.     The 
same  function  may  be  fulfilled  by  a  feeling.     Any  strong 
and  highly  interesting  feeling,  connected  with  one  attri- 
bute of  a  group,  spontaneously  classifies  all  objects  ac- 
cording as  they  possess  or  do  not  possess  that  attribute. 
We    may  be  tolerably   certain  that  the  things  capable 
of  satisfying  hunger  form  a  perfectly  distinct  class  in  the 
mind  of  any  of  the  more  intelligent  animals ;  quite  as 
much  so  as  if  they  were  able  to  use  or  understand  the 
word  food.     We  here  see  in  a  strong  light  the  impor- 
tant truth,  that  hardly  anything  universal  can  be  affirmed 
in  psychology  except  the  laws  of  association.     As  almost 
all  general  propositions  which  can  be  laid  down  respect- 
ing Mind,  are  consequences  of  these  laws,  so  do  these 
ultimate  laws,  in  varying  cases,  generate  different  deriva- 
tive   laws ;     and    are    continually    raising    up    excep- 
tions   to    the     empirical    generalizations    yielded     by 
direct    psychical    observation,    which,    so    far   as   true, 

DD 


oUflt 


f» 


402  THE    DOCTRINE    OF   CONCEPTS 

being  mere  cases  of  the  wider  laws,  are  always  limited 
by  tliem. 

We  have  now  attained  a  theory  of  Classification,  of 
Class  Notions,  and  of  Class  Names,  which  is  clear,  free 
from  difficulties,  and,  in  its  essential  elements,  understood 
and  assented  to  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  a  few  minor  matters,  I  find  no  fault  in  his  theory. 
It  is  where  his  theory  ends  and  his  practice  begins,  that 
I  am  obliged  to  diverge  from  him.  His  theory  is  a  com- 
plete condemnation  of  his  practice.  His  theory  is  that 
of  Nominalism ;  but  he  affirms,  in  opposition  to  every 
Conceptualist,  that  Nominalism  and  Conceptualism  are 
the  same,  and  on  this  justification  expounds  all  the 
operations  of  the  intellect  in  the  language,  and  on  the 
assumptions,  of  Conceptualism.  If  a  Concept  does  not 
exist  as  a  separate  or  independent  object  of  thought,  but 
is  always  a  mere  part  of  a  concrete  image,  and  has 
nothing  that  discriminates  it  from  the  other  parts  except 
a  special  share  of  attention,  guaranteed  to  it  by  special 
association  with  a  name ;  what  is  meant  by  the  para- 
mount place  assigned  to  Concepts  in  all  the  intellectual 
processes  ?  Can  it  be  right  to  found  the  whole  of  Logic, 
the  entire  theory  of  Judgment  and  Eeasoning,  upon  a 
thing  which  has  merely  a  fictitious  or  constructive 
existence  ?  Is  it  correct  to  say  that  we  think  by  means 
of  Concepts  ?  Would  it  not  convey  both  a  clearer  and 
a  truer  meaning,  to  say  that  we  think  by  means  of  ideas 
of  concrete  phsenomena,  such  as  are  presented  in  experi- 
ence or  represented  in  imagination,  and  by  means  of 
names,  which  being  in  a  peculiar  manner  associated  with 
certain  elements  of  the  concrete  images,  arrest  our  atten- 
tion on  those  elements  ?  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  told  us 
that  a  concept  cannot,  as  such,  be  "  realized  in  thought," 
or  *'  elicited  into  consciousness."  Can  it  be,  that  we  think 
and  reason  by  means  of  that  which  cannot  be  thought, 
of  which  we  cannot  become  conscious  ?  Of  course  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  did  not  mean,  nor  do  I,  that  we  cannot 
think  or  be  conscious  of  the  attributes  which  are  said  to 
compose  the  concept ;  but  we  can  only  be  conscious  of 


OR   GENERAL  NOTIONS.  403 

them  as   forming  a  representation  jointly   with   other 
attributes  which  do  not  enter  into  the  concept.     And  the 
difference  between  the  parts  of  the  same  representation 
which  are  inside  and  those  which  are  outside  what  is 
called  the  concept,  is  not  that  the  former  are  attended  to 
and  the  latter  not,  for  neither  of  these  is  always  true. 
It  is,  that  foreseeing  that  we  shall  frequently  or  occa- 
sionally desire  to  attend  only  to  the  former,  we  have  made 
for  ourselves,  or  have  received  from  our  predecessors,  a 
contrivance    for   being   reminded   of  theru,    which  also 
serves   for   fixing   our   exclusive   attention    upon   them 
when  called  to  mind.     To  say,  therefore,  that  we  think 
by  means  of  concepts,  is  only  a  circuitous  and  obscure 
way  of  saying  that  we  think   by  means  of  general  or 
class  names.*     To  give  an  intelligible  idea  of  the  fact, 
we  always  need  to  translate  it  out. of  the  former  language 
into   the  latter.     It  is  possible,  no  doubt,  so  to  define 
the  terms  that    both   expressions  shall  mean  the  same 
thing.     But  the  less  appropriate  language  has  the  im- 
mense disadvantage,   that   it   cannot    be  used  without 
tacitly  assuming  that  these  mere  parts  of  our  complex 
concrete  perceptions  and  ideas  have  a  separate  mental 
existence,  which  is  admitted  not  to  belong  to  them.     No 
one,  more  fully  than  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  recognises  the 
trjie  theory ;  but  the  acknowledgment  only  serves  him 


*  It  is  for  want  of  apprehending  this  view  of  the  matter  that  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  (Lectures,  iii.  31, 32)  brings  a  charge  of  self-contradiction  against 
Archbishop  Whately,  because,  having  in  the  commencement  and  through- 
out his  treatise  on  Logic,  represented  Reasoning  as  the  object-matter  of 
that  science,  he,  in  certain  passages,  says  that  Logic  is  entirely  conversant 
with  the  use  of  language.  This  is  a  contradiction  only  from  Sir  W, 
Hamiltotfs  point  of  view.  If  Archbishop  Whately's  had  been  the  same — 
if  he  had  thought  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  did  respecting  Concepts,  considered 
as  the  object-matter  of  Reasoning — he  would  have  been  justly  liable  to  the 
imputation  cast  upon  him.  But  the  Archbishop's  two  statements  are 
perfectly  consistent,  if  we  suppose  his  opinion  to  have  been,  that  the  for- 
mation of  Concepts,  and  the  subsequent  process  of  combining  them  iu 
arguments,  are  themselves  processes  of  language.  This  doctrine  (which  is 
in  fact  Mr.  Hansel's)  Sir  W.  Hamilton  deems  too  absurd  to  be  imputed 
to  the  Archbishop  (Discussions,  p.  13>*).  Yet  he  fancies  himself  a  Nomi- 
nalist, and  does  understand  and  assent  to  all  the  arguments  of  Nominalism. 
Unfortunately  an  intelligent  assent  to  one  of  two  conflicting  doctrines  is 
in  his  case  no  guarantee  against  holding,  for  all  practical  purposes  of 
thought,  the  other. 

DD    2 


404  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    CONCEPTS 

as  an  excuse  for  delivering  himself  up  unreservedly  to 
all  the  logical  consequences  of  the  false  theory.  To  read 
the  account  which  he  and  Mr.  Mansel,  in  common  with 
the  great  majority  of  modern  logicians,  give  of  our  intel- 
lectual processes — which  they  always  make  to  consist 
essentially  of  some  operation  practised  upon  concepts — no 
one  would  ever  imagine  that  concepts  were  not  complete, 
rounded  off,  distinct  and  separate  possessions  of  the 
mind,  habitually  dealt  with  by  it  quite  apart  from  any- 
thing else ;  and  this,  in  the  general  opinion  of  Concep- 
tualists,  they  are :  but  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
and  Mr.  Mansel,  they  are  secretly,  all  the  while,  inca- 
pable of  being  thought  except  as  parts  of  something  else 
which  has  always  to  be  dealt  with  along  with  them,  but 
which  these  philosophers,  in  their  expositions,  suppress 
as  completely,  as  if  they  had  forgotten  that  its  necessary 
presence  is  part  of  their  theory.  For  these  and  other 
reasons,  I  think  that  the  words  Concept,  General  Notion, 
and  other  phrases  of  like  import,  convenient  as  they  are 
for  the  lighter  and  every-day  uses  of  philosophical  dis- 
cussion, should  be  abstained  from  where  precision  is  re- 
quired. Above  all,  I  hold  that  nothing  but  confusion 
ever  results  from  introducing  the  term  Concept  into 
Logic,  and  that  instead  of  the  Concept  of  a  class,  we 
should  always  speak  of  the  signilication  of  a  class  name.* 
The  signification  of  a  class  name  has  two  aspects,  cor- 
responding to  the  distinction  to  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
attaches  so  much  importance,  between  the  Extension  and 

*  Dr.  M'Cosli  says  (p.  276),  "  I  think  it  desirable  to  have  a  phrase  to 
"  denote,  not  the  '  signification  of  a  class  name,'  bat  the  thing  signified  by 
"  the  class  name ;  and  the  fittest  I  can  think  of  is  Concept."  But  the 
"  thing  signified"  by  the  class  name  is  the  class  ;  the  various  objects  called 
by  the  name  :  and  class  is  a  sufficient  name  for  these,  nor  has  the  vrord 
Concept,  to  my  knowledge,  ever  been  predicated  of  them,  but  only  of  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  "  bundles  of  attributes."  Dr.  M'Cosh's  use  of  the  word 
Concept,  for  the  thing  conceived,  not  the  conception,  is,  I  believe,  peculiar 
to  himself. 

I  must  add,  that  the  chapter  of  Dr.  M'Cosh  from  which  I  am  now 
quoting,  that  headed,  "  The  Logical  Notion,"  contains  much  sound  phi- 
losophy, and  little  with  which  I  disagree  except  the  persistent  impression 
which  the  author  keeps  up  throughout  the  chapter  that  I  do  disagree 
with  him. 


OR  GENERAL   NOTIONS.  405 

the  Comprehension  of  a  concept ;  which  is  merely  a  bad 
expression  for  the  distinction  between  the  two  modes  of 
signification  of  a  concrete  sreneral  name.  Most  names 
are  still,  what  according  to  Mr.  Mansel  they  all  were 
originally,  names  of  objects;  and  do  not  cease  to  be  so 
by  becoming  class  names  ;  but,  though  names  of  objects, 
they  become  expressive  of  certain  attributes  of  those 
objects,  and  when  predicated  of  an  object,  they  affirm  of 
it  those  attributes.  The  name  is  said,  in  the  language 
of  logicians,  to  denote  the  objects  and  connote  the  attri- 
butes. W/cite  denotes  chalk  and  other  white  substances, 
and  connotes  the  particular  colour  which  is  common  to 
them.  Bird  denotes  eagles,  sparrows,  crows,  geese,  and 
so  forth,  and  connotes  life,  the  possession  of  wings,  and 
the  other  properties  by  which  we  are  guided  in  applying 
the  name.  The  various  objects  denoted  by  the  class 
name  are  what  is  meant  by  the  Extension  of  the  con- 
cept, while  the  attributes  connoted  are  its  Comprehen- 
sion. It  must  be  remarked,  however,  that  the  Extension 
is  not  anything  intrinsic  to  the  concept;  it  is  the  sum  of 
all  the  objects,  in  our  concrete  images  of  which,  the  concept 
is  included :  but  the  Comprehension  is  the  very  concept 
itself,  for  the  concept  means  nothing  but  our  mental  repre- 
sentation of  the  sum  of  the  attributes  composing  it. 

And  here  it  is  important  to  take  notice  of  a  psycho- 
logical truth,  which  forms  an  additional  reason  for  pre- 
ferring the  expression  that  we  think  by  general  names, 
to  that  of  thinking  by  concepts.  Since  tiie  concept  only 
exists  as  a  part  of  a  concrete  mental  state ;  if  we  say 
that  we  think  by  means  of  it,  and  not  by  the  whole 
which  is  a  part  of  it,  it  ought  at  least  to  be  t/ie  part  by 
which  we  think.  Since  that  is  the  only  distinction  be- 
tween it  and  the  remainder  of  the  presentation  or  repre- 
sentation in  which  it  is  imbedded,  at  least  that  distinc- 
tion should  be  real :  all  which  enters  into  the  concept 
ought  to  be  operative  in  thought.  So  far  is  this  from 
being  true,  that  in  our  processes  of  thought,  seldom 
more  than  a  part,  sometimes  a  very  small  part,  of  what 
is  comprehended  in  the  concept,  is  attended  to,  or  comes 


406  THE   DOCTRINE    OF    CONCEPTS 

into  play.  This  is  forcibly  stated,  though  in  Concep- 
tualist  phraseology,  by  Mr.  Mansel.  "We  can,"  he  says,* 
"  and  in  the  majority  of  cases  do,  employ  concepts  as 
"  instruments  of  thought,  without  submitting  them  to 
"the  test  of  even  possible  individualization.  .  .  .  I  can- 
"  not  conceive  a  triangle  which  is  neither  equilateral,  nor 
**  isosieles,  nor  scalene;  but  I  can  judge  and  reason  about 
"  a  triangle  without  at  the  moment  trying  to  conceive  it 
"  at  all.  This  is  one  of  the  consequences  of  the  repre- 
"  sentation  of  concepts  by  language.  The  sign  is  suhsti- 
"  tutedfor  the  notion  signified;  a  step  which  considerably 
"  facilitates  the  performance  of  complex  operations  of 
"  thought ;  but  in  the  same  proportion  endangers  the 
"  logical  accuracy  of  each  successive  step,  as  we  do  not, 
"  in  each,  stop  to  verify  our  signs.  Words,  as  thus  em- 
"  ployed,  resemble  algebraical  symbols,  which,  during 
"  the  process  of  a  long  calculation,  we  combine  in  various 
*'  relations  to  each  other,  without  at  the  moment  thinking 
"  of  the  original  signification  assigned  to  each."  The 
attempt  to  stand  at  once  on  two  incompatible  theories, 
leads  to  strange  freaks  of  expression.  Mr.  Mansel  de- 
cribes  us  as  thinking  by  means  of  concepts  which  we 
are  incapable  of  forming,  and  do  not  even  attempt  to 
form,  but  use  the  signs  instead.  Yet  he  will  not  consent 
to  call  this  thinking  by  the  signs,  but  insists  that  it  is 
the  concepts  which  are  even  in  this  case  the  "  instru- 
ments of  thought."  It  is  surely  a  very  twisted  logical 
position  which,  when  he  is  so  entirely  right  in  what  he 
has  to  say,  compels  him  to  use  so  strangely  contorted  a 
mode  of  saying  it. 

The  same  important  psychological  fact  is  excellently 
illustrated  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  in  one  of  the  very  best 
chapters  of  his  works,  the  Tenth  Lecture  on  Logic,  in 
which  it  is  stated  as  follows  :t  "  As  a  notion  or  con- 
^  cept  is  the  fictitious  whole  or  unity  made  up  of  a  plu- 
"  raiity  of  attributes, — a  whole,  too,  often  of  a  very 
"  complex  multiplicity ;  and  as  this  multiplicity  is  only 
"  mentally  held  together,  inasmuch  as  the  concept  is 

*  Prolegomena  Logica,  pp.  31,  32.  f  Lectures,  iii.  171. 


OR   GENERAL    NOTIONS.  407 

"  fixed  and  ratified  in  a  sign  or  word ;  it  frequently  hap- 
"  pens  tliat,  in  its  employment,  the  word  does  not  sug- 
"  gest  the  whole  amount  of  thought  for  which  it  is  the 
"  adequate  expression,  but,  on  the  contrary,  we  frequently 
"  give  and  take  the  sign,  either  with  an  obscure  or  indis- 
"  tinct  consciousness  of  its  meaning,  or  even  without  an 
"  actual  consciousness  of  its  signification  at  all."  The 
word  does  not  always  serve  the  purpose  of  fixing  our 
attention  on  the  whole  of  the  attributes  which  it  con- 
notes ;  some  of  them  may  be  only  recalled  to  mind  faintly, 
others  possibly  not  at  all :  a  phsenomenon  easily  to  be 
accounted  for  by  the  laws  of  Obliviscence.  But  the  part 
of  the  attributes  signified  which  the  word  does  recal, 
may  be  all  that  is  necessary  for  us  to  think  of,  at  the 
time  and  for  the  purpose  in  hand;  it  may  be  a  sufficient 
part  to  set  going  all  the  associations  by  means  of  which 
we  proceed  through  that  thought  to  ulterior  thoughts. 
Indeed,  it  is  because  part  of  the  attributes  have  gene- 
rally sufficed  for  that  purpose,  that  the  habit  is  acquired 
of  not  attending  to  the  remainder.  When  the  attributes 
not  attended  to  are  really  of  no  importance  for  the  end 
in  view,  and  if  attended  to  would  not  have  altered  the 
results  of  the  mental  process,  there  is  no  harm  done : 
much  of  our  valid  thinking  is  carried  on  in  this  manner, 
and  it  is  to  this  that  our  thinking  processes  owe,  in  a 
great  measure,  their  proverbial  rapidity.  This  kind  of 
thinking  was  called,  by  Leibnitz,  Symbolical.  A  passage 
of  one  of  the  early  writings  of  that  eminent  thinker,  in 
which  it  is  brought  to  notice  with  his  accustomed  clear- 
ness, is  translated  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  from  whom  I 
re-quote  it.* 

"  For  the  most  part,  especially  in  an  analysis  of  any 
**  length,  we  do  not  view  at  once  (non  simul  intuemur) 
"  the  whole  characters  or  attributes  of  the  thing,  but  in 
"  place  of  these  we  employ  signs,  the  explication  of  which 
"  into  what  they  signify  we  are  wont,  at  the  moment  of 
"  actual  thought,  to  omit,  knowing  or  believing  that  we 
"  have  this  explication  always  in  our  power.     Thus,  when 

*  Lectures,  iiL  181. 


408  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  CONCEPTS 

"  I  think  a  cliiliagon  (or  polygon  of  a  thousand  sides)  I 
"  do  not  always  consider  the  various  attributes  of  the 
•'  side,  of  the  equality,  and  of  the  number  or  thousand, 
"  but  use  these  words  (whose  meaning  is  obscurely  and 
"  imperfectly  presented  to  the  mind)  in  lieu  of  the  notions 
"  which  I  have  of  them,  because  I  remember,  that  I 
"  possess  the  signification  of  these  words,  though  their 
"  application  and  explication  I  do  not  at  present 
*'  deem  to  be  necessary : — this  mode  of  thinking,  1  am 
"  used  to  call  blind  ox  symbolical:  we  employ  it  in  Algebra 
"  and  in  Arithmetic,  but  in  fact  universally.  And  cer- 
"  tainly  when  the  notion  is  very  complex,  we  cannot 
"  think  at  once  all  the  ingredient  notions :  but  where 
"  this  is  possible, — at  least,  inasmuch  as  it  is  possible, — 
"  I  call  the  cognition  intuitive.  Of  the  primary  elements 
"  of  our  notions,  there  is  given  no  other  knowledge  than 
"  the  intuitive  :  as  of  our  composite  notions  there  is,  lor 
"  the  most  part,  possible  only  a  symbolical.""* 

Yet  the  elements  which  are  thus  habitually  left  out, 
and  of  which  in  the  case  of  a  composite  notion,  if  Leib- 
nitz is  right,  some  must  be  left  out,  are  really  parts  of 
the  signitication  of  the  name,  and  if  the  word.  Concept 
has  any  meaning,  are  parts  of  the  concept.     Leibnitz 

*  It  will  be  remarked  tliat  Leibnitz  here  employs  the  word  Intuitive  in 
a  sense  entirely  different  from  that  which  British  metaphysicians,  and  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  himself,  attach  to  the  word.  In  Leibnitz's  sense,  we  cognise 
a  thing  intuitively  in  as  far  as  we  are  conscious  of  the  attributes  ot  the 
thing  itself ;  symbolically  in  as  far  as  we  merely  think  of  its  name,  as 
standing  for  an  aggregate  of  attributes,  without  having  all,  or  perhaps  any, 
of  those  attributes  present  to  our  mind.  I  cannot  help  being  surprised 
that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  should  have  regarded  this  distinction  of  Leibnitz  as 
coinciding  with  that  of  Kant  and  the  modern  German  thinkers  between 
Uegriff  and  Anschauung,  in  other  words,  Concept  and  Presentation.  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  considers  Begriff  to  be  a  name  for  "  the  symbolical  notions 
of  the  understanding,"  in  contrast  with  Anschauung,  which  means  "the 
intuitive  presentations  of  Sense  and  representations  of  Imagination." 
(Lectures,  iii.  183.)  He  is  right  as  to  Anschauung,  but  as  for  "  symbolical 
notions  of  the  understanding,"  our  thinking  is  called  by  Leibnitz  symbolical 
exactly  in  so  far  as  it  takes  place  without  any  "  notions,"  any  concept  or 
Begritf  at  all,  by  virtue  of  the  mere  knowledge  that  there  is  a  Begriff  which 
the  word  represents,  and  which  we  could  recal  if  we  wanted  it.  When 
thinking  is  completely  symbolical,  the  meaning  of  the  word  is  eliminated 
from  thought,  and  only  the  word  remains  :  as  in  Leibnitz's  own  Ulustration 
from  algebra. 


OR   GENERAL    NOTIONS.  409 

accordingly  knew  better  than  to  say,  as  Mr.  Mansel  says 
and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  implies,  that  even  in  these  cases 
we  think  by  means  of  the  concept.  According  to  him 
we  sometimes  think  entirely  without  the  concept,  gene- 
rally only  by  a  part  of  it,  which  may  be  the  wrong  part, 
or  an  insufficient  part,  but  which  may  be,  and  in  all 
sound  thinking  is,  sufficient.  On  this  point,  therefore, 
a  false  apprehension  of  the  facts  of  thought  is  conveyed 
by  the  doctrine  which  speaks  of  Concepts  as  its  instru- 
ment. Leibnitz  would  perhaps  have  said,  that  the  name 
is  the  instrument  in  one  of  the  two  kinds  of  thinking, 
and  the  concept  in  the  other.  The  more  reasonable 
doctrine  surely  is,  that  the  name  is  the  instrument  in 
both ;  the  difference  being,  that  in  one  case  it  does  the 
whole,  and  in  the  other  only  a  part,  perhaps  the  minimum, 
of  the  work  for  which  it  is  intended  and  fitted,  that  of 
reminding  us  of  the  portions  of  our  concrete  mental 
representations  which  we  expect  that  we  shall  have  need 
of  attending  to. 

In  summary ;  if  the  doctrine,  that  we  think  by  con- 
cepts, means  that  a  concept  is  the  only  thing  present  to 
the  mind  along  with  the  individual  object  which  (to  use 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  language)  we  think  under  the  con- 
cept, this  is  not  true :  since  there  is  always  present  a 
concrete  idea  or  image,  of  which  the  attributes  compre- 
hended in  the  concept  are  only,  and  cannot  be  conceived 
as  anything  but,  a  part.  Again,  if  it  be  meant  that  the 
concept,  though  only  a  part  of  what  is  present  to  the 
mind,  is  the  part  which  is  operative  in  the  act  of  thought, 
neither  is  this  true :  for  what  is  operative  is,  in  a  great 
majority  of  cases,  much  less  than  the  entire  concept, 
being  that  portion  only  which  we  have  retained  the  habit 
of  distinctly  attending  to.  In  neither  of  these  senses, 
therefore,  do  we  think  by  means  of  the  concept :  and  all 
that  is  true  is,  that  when  we  refer  any  object  or  set  of 
objects  to  a  class,  some  at  least  of  the  attributes  included 
in  the  concept  are  present  to  the  mind ;  being  recalled 
to  consciousness  and  fixed  in  attention,  through  their 
association  with  the  class-name. 


410  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    CONCEPTS 

Before  leaving  this  part  of  the  subject,  it  seems  neces- 
sary to  remark,  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  by  no  means 
consistent  in  the  extension  which  he  gives  to  the  signifi- 
•cation  of  the  word  Concept.     In  most  cases  in  which  he 
uses  it,  he  makes  it  synonymous  with  General  Notion, 
and  allows  concepts  of  classes  only,  not  of  individuals.* 
It  is  thus  that  he  expressly  defines  the  term.     "  A  Con- 
"  cept,"  he  says,f  "  is  the  cognition  or  idea  of  the  gene- 
"  ral  character  or  characters,  point  or  points,  in  which  a 
*'  plurality    of  objects  coincide."     "  Concept,"   he  says 
again,!  ''is  convertible  with  general  notion,  or  more  cor- 
"  rectly,  notion  simply."     He  speaks  of  the  extending  of 
the  term  to  our  direct  knowledge  of  individuals,  as  an 
"abusive  employment"  of  it.§     He  also  says,||    "No- 
"  tions  ■  and  Concepts  are  sometimes  designated  by  the 
"  style   of  general    notions, — general  conceptions.       This 
"  is  superfluous,  for  in  propriety  of  speech,  notions  and 
"  concepts  are,  in  their  very  nature,  general."     In  cer- 
tain places,  however,   he  speaks  of  concepts  of  indivi- 
duals.    "If  I  think*|[  of  Socrates  as  son  of  Sophroniscus, 
"  as  Athenian,  as  philosopher,   as  pugnosed,  these  are 
*'  only  so  many  characters,  limitations,  or  determinations 
"  which  I  predicate  of  Socrates,  which  distinguish  him 
"  from  all  other  men,  and  together  make  up  my  notion 
"  or  concept  of  him."     And  again,**  "  When  the  Exten- 
"  sion  of  a  concept  becomes  a  minimum,  that  is,  when  it 
*'  contains  no  other  notions  under  it,  it  is  called  an  indi- 
"  vidual."     And  further  on,tt  "  It  is  evident  that  the 
"  more  distinctive  characters  the  concept  contains,  the 
"  more  minutely  it  will  distinguish  and  determine,  and 
"  that  if  it  contain  a  plenum  of  distinctive  characters,  it 
"  must  contain   the    distinctive,   the   determining   cha- 
"  racters  of  some  individual  object.     How  do  the  two 
''  quantities  now  stand  ?     In  regard  to  the  comprehen- 
*'  sion  or  depth,  it  is  evident  that  it  is  here  at  its  maxi- 
"  mum,  the  concept  being  a  complement  of  the   whole 

*  Lectures,  iii.  119,  121,  127,  128,  130,  cum  multis  aliis. 

t  Ibid.  p.  122.  X  Discussions,  p.  283. 

§  Lectures,  iii.  121.  ||  Ibid.  p.  212.  ^  Ibid.  p.  78. 

**  Ibid.  p.  146.  tt  Ibid.  p.  148. 


OR   GENERAL   NOTIONS.  411 

"  attributes  of  an  individual  object,  which,  by  these  attri- 
"  butes,  it  thinks  and  discriminates  from  every  other. 
"  On  the  contrary,  the  extension  or  breadth  of  the  con- 
"  cept  is  here  at  its  minimum ;  for,  as  the  extension  is 
"  great  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  objects  to  which 
"  the  concept  can  be  applied,  and  as  the  object  here  is 
"  only  an  individual  one,  it  is  evident  that  it  could  not 
"  be  less  without  ceasing  to  exist  at  all."  But,  in  the 
sequel  of  the  same  exposition,  he  again  seems  to  sur- 
render this  use  of  the  word  Concept  as  an  improper  one, 
saying,*  "  If  a  concept  be  an  individual,  that  is,  only 
"  a  bundle  of  individual  qualities^  it  is  .  .  .  not  a  proper 
"  abstract  concept  at  all,  but  only  a  concrete  represen- 
"  tation  of  Imagination."  And  indeed,  no  other  doctrine 
is  consistent  with  the  proposition  elsewhere  laid  down 
by  our  author  (though  founded,  as  I  think,  on  an  error), 
that  "  the  words  Conception,  Concept,  Notion,  should 
"  be  limited  to  the  thought  of  what  cannot  be  repre- 
"  sented  in  imagination,  as  the  thought  suggested  by 
"  a  general  term."t 

Mr.  Mansel,  on  the  contrary,  justifies  the  phrase,  con- 
cept of  an  individual,  maintaining  that  "  the  subjects  of 
all  logical  judgments  are  concepts."!  "The  man,"  he 
says,^  "  as  an  individual  existing  at  some  past  time,  can- 
"  not  become  immediately  an  object  of  thought,  and 
"  hence  is  not,  properly  speaking,  the  subject  of  any 
"  logical  proposition.  IF  I  say,  C«sar  was  the  conqueror 
"  of  Pompey,  the  immediate  object  of  my  thought  is  not 
"  Caesar  as  an  individual  existing  two  thousand  years 
"  ago,  but  a  concept  now  present  in  my  mind,  compris- 
"  ing  certain  attributes  which  I  believe  to  have  coex- 
"  isted  in  a  certain  man.  I  may  historically  know  that 
"  these  attributes  existed  in  one  individual  only  \  and 
"  hence  my  concept,  virtually  universal,  is  actually  singu- 
"  lar,  from  the  accident  of  its  being  predicable  of  that 
*'  individual  only.  But  there  is  no  logical  objection  to 
•'  the  theory  that  the  whole  history  of  mankind  may  be 

*  Lectures,  iii.  p.  152.  f  Foot-note  to  Reid,  p.  360. 

X  Prolegomena  Logica,  p.  63.        §  Ibid.  p.  6:J. 


412  THE   DOCTRINE  OF  CONCEPTS 

"  repeated  at  recurring  intervals,  and  that  the  name  and 
"  actions  of  Csesar  may  be  successively  found  in  various 
"  individuals  at  corresponding  periods  of  every  cycle." 

If  this  be  so,  one  of  two  things  follows.  Either,  if 
I  met  with  a  person  who  exactly  corresponded  to  the 
,  concept  I  have  formed  of  Csesar,  I  must  suppose  that 
this  person  actually  is  Csesar,  and  lived  in  the  century 
preceding  the  birth  of  Christ ;  or  else,  I  cannot  think  of 
Csesar  as  Csesar,  but  only  as  a  Csesar  ;  and  all  those  which 
are  mistakenly  called  proper  names  are  general  names, 
the  names  of  virtual  classes,  signifying  a  set  of  attributes 
which  carry  the  name  with  them,  wherever  they  are  found. 
Either  theory  seems  to  be  suflficiently  refuted  by  stating 
it.  Surely  the  true  doctrine  is  that  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
that  what  is  called  my  concept  of  Csesar  is  the  presenta- 
tion in  imagination  of  the  individual  Csesar  as  such.  Mr. 
Mansel  might  have  learnt  better  from  Eeid,  who  says: 
"  Most  words  (indeed  all  general  words)  are  the  signs  of 
"  ideas :  but  proper  names  are  not :  they  signify  indivi- 
"  (dual  things,  and  not  ideas."*  And  again,  soon  after  tf 
"  The  same  proper  name  is  never  applied  to  several  indi- 
'*  viduals  on  account  of  their  similitude,  because  the 
**  very  intention  of  a  proper  name  is  to  distinguish  one 
"  individual  from  all  others ;  and  hence  it  is  a  maxim  in 
"  grammar  that  proper  names  have  no  plural  number. 
"  A  proper  name  signifies  nothing  but  the  individual 
"  whose  name  it  is ;  and  when  we  apply  it  to  the  indivi- 
"  dual,  we  neither  affirm  nor  deny  anything  concerning 
"  him."  The  whole  of  field's  doctrine  respecting  names 
and  general  notions  is  not  only  far  more  clear,  but  nearer 
to  the  true  doctrine  of  the  connotation  of  names,  than  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  or  Mr.  Mansel's.j 

*  Essays  on  the  Intellectual  powers,  Works,  p.  404.  By  ideas  Reid 
here  means  (as  he  fully  explains)  attributes. 

t  Ibid.  p.  412. 

J  Accordingly,  when  Sir  "W.  Hamilton  (foot-note  to  p.  691)  contends,  in 
opposition  to  Reid,  that  there  are  definitions  which  are  not  nominal  biit 
notional,  since  they  have  for  their  object  "the  more  accurate  determination 
of  the  contents  of  a  notion,"  there  is  no  real  difference  of  meaning  between 
them  :  the  contents  of  a  notion  being  simply  the  connotation  of  a  name. 

bir  W.  Hamilton  enters,  at  some  length,  into  the  explanation  of  what 


OR   GENERAL    NOTIONS.  413 

is  meant  by  the  clearness,  and  the  distinctness,  of  Concepts.  A  concept, 
according  to  him,  is  clear,  if  we  can  distinguish  it  as  a  whole  from  other 
concepts ;  distinct,  if  we  can  discriminate  the  characters  or  attributes  of 
which  it  is  the  sum  (Lectures,  iii.  158).  The  last  statement  is  intelligible, 
but  what  does  the  first  mean  ?  If  we  do  not  know  of  what  character^ 
the  concept  is  composed,  seeing  that  it  has  no  existence  but  in  those  cha- 
racters, how  can  we  know  it  so  as  to  distinguish  it  from  other  concepts  ? 
Our  author  certainly  had  not  a  clear  conception  of  what  makes  a  con- 
ception clear ;  and  the  proof  is,  that  he  adopts  as  part  of  his  text  a  quota- 
tion from  Esser's  Logic,  in  which  Esser  makes  the  clearness  of  a  concept 
to  depend  on  our  being  able  to  distinguish,  not  the  concept  itself,  but  the 
objects  included  under  it ;  on  our  being  able,  in  short,  to  apply  the  class- 
name  correctly.  According  to  Esser,  "  a  concept  is  said  to  be  clear,  when 
"  the  degree  of  consciousness  by  which  it  is  accompanied  is  sufficient  to, 
"  discriminate"  not  itself  from  other  concepts,  but  "what  we  think  in  and 
*'  through  it,  from  what  we  think  in  and  through  other  notions :"  and 
"  notions  absolutely  clear"  are  "  notions  whose  objects"  (not  as  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  says,  themselves)  cannot "  possibly  be  confounded  with  aught  else, 
whether  known  or  unknown."  (Lectures,  iii.  160,  161.)  So  that,  according 
to  Esser,  the  clearness  of  a  concept  has  reference  to  its  Extension,  the 
distinctness  to  its  Comprehension.  This  is  not  the  only  instance  in  which 
our  author  helps  out  his  own  expositions  by  passages  from  other  authors, 
written  from  a  point  of  view  more  or  less  different  from  his  own. 


414 


CHAPTEE  XVIII. 


OF    JUDGMENT. 


Though,  as  has  appeared  in  the  last  chapter,  the  pro- 
position that  we  think  by  concepts  is,  if  not  positively 
untrue,  at  least  an  unprecise  and  misleading  expression 
of  the  truth,  it  is  not,  however,  to  be  concluded  that 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  view  of  Logic,  being  wholly  grounded 
on  that  proposition,  must  be  destitute  of  value.  Many 
writers  have  given  good  and  valuable  expositions  of  the 
principles  and  rules  of  Logic,  from  the  Conceptualist 
point  of  view.  The  doctrines  which  they  have  laid 
down  respecting  Conception,  Judgment,  and  Eeasoning, 
have  been  capable  of  being  rendered  into  equivalent 
statements  respecting  Terms,  Propositions,  and  Argu- 
ments ;  these,  indeed,  were  what  the  writers  really  had 
in  their  thoughts,  and  there  was  little  amiss  except  a 
mode  of  expression  which  attempted  to  be  more  philo- 
sophical than  it  knew  how  to  be.  To  say  nothing  of 
less  illustrious  examples,  this  is  true  of  all  the  properly 
logical  part  of  Locke's  Essay.  His  admirable  Third 
Book  requires  hardly  any  other  alteration  to  bring  it  up 
to  the  scientific  level  of  the  present  time,  than  to  be 
corrected  by  blotting  out  everywhere  the  words  ^Abstract 
Idea,  and  replacing  them  by  "the  connotation  of  the 
class  name." 

We  shall,  accordingly,  proceed  to  examine  the  expla- 
nation of  Judgment,  and  of  Eeasoning,  which  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  has  built  on  the  foundation  of  the  doctrine  of 
Concepts. 

"  To  judge,"  he  says,*  "  is  to  recognise  the  relation 
*  Lectures,  iii.  225,  226. 


>ltpxcWc».fevv    •  JUDGMENT.^  415 

"  of  congruence  or  of  confliction  in  which  two  concepts, 
"  two  individual  things,  or  a  concept  and  an  individual, 
"  compared  together,  stand  to  each  other.  This  recog- 
"  nition,  considered  as  an  internal  consciousness,  is  called 
"  a  Judgment ;  considered  as  expressed  in  language,  it 
"  is  called  a  Proposition  or  Predication." 

To  be  certain  of  understanding  this,  we  must  inquire 
what  is  meant  by  a  relation  of  congruence  or  of  con- 
fliction between  concepts.  To  consult  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
definitions  of  words  is,  as  we  have  seen,  not  a  sure  way 
of  ascertaining  the  sense  in  which  he  practically  uses 
them ;  but  it  is  one  of  the  ways,  and  we  are  bound  to 
employ  it  in  the  first  instance.  A  few  pages  before,  he 
has  given  a  sort  of  definition  of  these  terms.*  "  Con- 
'  cepts,  in  relation  to  each  other,  are  said  to  be  either 
'  Congruent  or  Agreeing,  inasmuch  as  they  may  be  con- 
'  nected  in  thought ;  or   Conjlictive,  inasmuch  as  they 

*  cannot.     The  confliction  constitutes  the  Opposition  of 
'  notions  "     This    Opposition   is  twofold.     "  1°.  Imme- 

*  diate  or  Contradictor g  Opposition,  called  likewise  Repug- 
'  nance;  and  2°.  Mediate  or  Contrarg  Opposition.     The 

*  former  emerges  when  one  concept  abolishes  directly, 

*  or  by  simple  negation,  what  another  establishes ;  the 

*  latter,  when  one  concept  does  this  not  directly,  or  by 
'  simple  negation,  but  through  the  affirmation  of  some- 

*  thing  else." 
Congruent  Concepts,  therefore,  does  not  mean  concepts 

which  coincide,  either  wholly  or  in  any  of  their  parts, 
but  such  as  are  mutually  compatible ;  capable  of  being 
predicated  of  the  same  individual ;  of  being  combined 
in  the  same  presentation  of  sense  or  representation  of 
imagination.  This  is  more  clearly  expressed  in  a  pas- 
sage from  Krug,  which  our  author  adopts  as  part  of  his 
own  exposition.!  *'  Identity  is  not  to  be  confounded 
"  with  Agreement  or  Congruence,  nor  Diversity  with 
"  Confliction.  All  identical  concepts  are,  indeed,  con- 
"  gruent,  but  all  congruent  notions  are  not  identical. 
"  Thus  learning  and  virtue,  beautg  and  riches,  magnanimity 
*  Lectures,  iiL  213,  214.  f  Ibid.  p.  214 


416  JUDGMENT. 

**  and  stature,  are  congruent  notions,  inasmuch  as,  in 
"  thinking  a  thing,  they  can  easil}^  be  combined  in  the 
"  notion  we  form  of  it,  although  themselves  very  dif- 
"  ferent  from  each  other.  In  like  manner  all  conflicting 
"  notions  are  diverse  or  difierent  notions,  for  unless  dif- 
*'  ferent,  they  could  not  be  mutually  conflictive  ;  but,  on 
"  the  other  hand,  all  difiPerent  concepts  are  not  conflic- 
"  tive ;  but  those  only  whose  difference  is  so  great  that 
"  each  involves  the  negation  of  the  other ;  as  for  ex- 
"  ample,  virtue  and  vice,  beauty  and  deformity,  wealth  and 
^'  poverty!'  Thus  interpreted,  our  author's  doctrine  is, 
that  to  judge,  is  to  recognise  whether  two  concepts,  two 
things,  or  a  concept  and  a  thing,  are  capable  of  coexist- 
ing as  parts  of  the  same  mental  representation.  This  I 
will  call  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  first  theory  of  Judgment ; 
I  will  venture  to  add,  his  best. 

But  he  soon  after  proceeds  to  say,"^  "When  two  or 
"  more  thoughts  are  given  in  consciousness,  there  is  in 
"  general  an  endeavour  on  our  part  to  discover  in  them, 
"  and  to  develop,  a  relation  of  congruence  or  of  conflic- 
*•  tion ;  that  is,  we  endeavour  to  find  out  whether  these 
*'  thoughts  will  or  will  not  coincide — may  or  may  not 
"  be  blended  into  one.  If  they  coincide,  we  judge,  we 
"  enounce,  their  congruence  or  compatibility  :  if  they  do 
"  not  coincide,  we  judge,  we  enounce,  their  confliction  or 
"  incompatibility.  Thus,  if  we  compare  the  thoughts, 
"  water,  iron,  and  rusting,  find  them  congruent,  and 
"  connect  them  into  a  single  thought,  thus — water  rusts 
"  iron — in  that  case  we  form  a  judgment. 

"  But  if  two  notions  be  judged  congruent,  in  other 
"  words,  be  conceived  as  one,  this  their  unity  can  only 
"  be  realized  in  consciousness,  inasmuch  as  one  of  these 
"  notions  is  viewed  as  an  attribute  or  determination  of 
"  the  other.  For,  on  the  one  hand,  it  is  impossible 
"  for  us  to  think  as  one  two  attributes,  that  is,  two 
"  things  viewed  as  determining,  and  yet  neither  deter- 
"  mining  or  qualifying  the  other ;  nor,  on  the  other 
"  hand,  two  subjects,  that  is,  two  things  thought  as 
•  Lectures,  iii.  226,  227. 


JUDGMENT.  41 7 

"  determined,   and  yet  neither  of  them  determined  or 
"  qualified  by  the  other." 

In  this  regress  from  ignotum  to  ignotius,  the  next  thin^ 
to  be  ascertained  is,  what  relation  between  one  tliought 
and  another  is  signified  by  the   verb  "  to  determine." 
Such  explanation  as    our  author   deemed  it   necessary 
to  give,  may  be  found  a  few  pages  further  back.     He 
there  stated,*  that  by  determining  a  notion,  he  means 
adding  on  more  characters,  by  each  of  which  "  vve  limit 
"  or  determine  more  and  more  the  abstract  vagueness  or 
"  extension  of  the  notion ;  until  at  last,  if  every  attri- 
**  bute  be  annexed,  the  sum  of  attributes  contained  in 
"  the  notion  becomes  convertible  with  the  sum  of  attri- 
"  butes  of  which  some  concrete  individual  or  reality  is  the 
"  complement."  Substituting,  then,  the  definition  for  what 
it  defines,  we  find  our  author's  opinion  to  be,  that  two 
notions  can  only  be  congruent,  that  is,  capable  of  being 
blended  into  one,  if  we  conceive  one  of  them  as  adding 
on  additional  attributes  to  the  other.     This  is  not  yet 
very  clear.      We  must  have  recourse  to  his  illustration. 
"  For  example,!  we  cannot  think  the  two  attributes  elec- 
"  trical  and  polar  as  a  single  notion,  unless  we  convert 
"  the  one  of  these  attributes  into  a  subject,  to  be  deter- 
"  mined  or  q'jalified  by  the  other."     Do  we  ever  think 
the  two  attributes  electrical  and  polar  as  a  single  notion  ? 
We  think  them  as  distinct  parts  of  the  same  notion,  that 
is,  as  attributes  which  are  constantly  combined.      "  But 
"  if  we  do, — if  we  say,  what  is  electrical  is  polar,   we  at 
"  once  reduce  the  duality  to  unity ;  we  judge  that  polar 
"  f*  one  of  the  constituent  characters  of  the  notion  electrical, 
"  or  that  what  is  electrical  is  contained  under  the  class  of 
*'  things,  marked  out  by  the  common  character  of  polarity ^ 
The  last  italics  are  mine,  intended   to  mark  the  place 
where  an  intelligible  meaning  first  emerges.     "  We  may,  J 
**  therefore,  articulately  define  a  judgment  or  proposi- 
"  tion  to  be  the  product  of  that  act  in  which  we  pro- 
"  nounce  that  of  two  notions,  thought  as  subject  and  as 

*  Lectures,  iii.  1P4.  f  Ibid.  p.  227. 

%  Ibid.  p.  229. 

£   E 


418  JUDGMENT. 

"  predicate,  ihe  one  does  or  does  not  constitute  a  part  of  the 
"  other,  either  in  the  quantity  of  Extension,  or  in  the 
"  quantity  of  Comprehension." 

This  is  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  second  theory  of  Judgment, 
enunciated  at  a  distance  of  exactly  three  pages  from  the 
first,  without  the  smallest  suspicion  on  his  part  that  they 
are  not  one  and  the  same.  Yet  they  difier  by  the  whole 
interval  which  separates  a  part  of  from  along  with.  Ac- 
cording to  the  first  theory,  concepts  are  recognised  as 
congruent  whenever  they  are  not  mutually  repugnant ; 
when  they  are  capable  of  being  objectively  realized  along 
with  one  another ;  when  the  attributes  comprehended  in 
both  of  them  can  be  simultaneously  possessed  by  the 
same  object.  According  to  the  second  theory,  they  are 
only  congruent  when  the  one  concept  is  actually  a  part 
of  the  other.  The  only  circumstance  in  which  the  two 
theories  resemble  is,  that  both  of  them  are  unfolded  out 
of  the  vague  expression  "  capable  of  being  connected  in 
thougli,t."  They  are,  in  fact,  two  different  and  conflicting 
interpretations  of  that  expression.  How  irreconcilable 
they  are,  is  apparent  when  we  descend  to  particulars. 
Krug's  examples,  learning  and  virtue,  beauty  and  riches, 
&c.,  are  congruent  in  the  first  sense,  since  they  are  attri- 
butes which  can  be  thought  as  existing  together  in  the 
same  subject.  But  is  the  concept  learning  a  part  of  the 
concept  virtue,  the  conc«^pt  beauty  a  part  of  the  concept 
riches,  or  vice  versa  ?  Sir  W.  Hamilton  would  scarcely 
affirm  that  they  are  in  a  relation  of  part  and  whole  in 
Comprehension ;  and  such  relation  as  they  have  in  Ex- 
tension is  not  a  relation  between  the  concepts,  but  be- 
tween the  aggregates  of  real  things  of  which  they  are 
predicable.  One  of  those  aggregates  might  be  part  of 
the  other,  though  it  is  not ;  but  one  of  the  concepts  can 
never  be  part  of  the  other.  No  one  can  ever  find  the 
notion  beauty  in  the  notion  riches,  nor  conversely. 

Our  author  having  thus  gently  slid  back  into  the  com- 
mon Conceptualist  theory  ot  judgment,  that  it  consists  in 
recognising  the  identity  or  iion-idcntity  of  two  notions, 
adheres  to  it  thenceforward  with  as  much  consistency 


JUDGMENT.  419 

as  we  need  ever  expect  to  find  in  him.     We  may  consider 
as   his  final  theory  of  Judgment,  on  which  his  subse- 
quent logical  speculations  are  built,  that  a  judgment  is  I 
a  recognition  in  thought,  a  proposition  a  statement  in  | 
words,  that  one  notion  is  or  is  not  a  part  of  another.   | 
He  makes  use  of  the  word  notion  (doubtless)  to  include 
the  case  in  which  either  of  the  terms  of  the  proposition 
is  singular.     The  two  notions,  one  of  which  is  recognised 
as  being  or  not  being  a  part  of  the  other,  ma}'-  be  either 
Concepts,  that  is,  General  Notions,  or  one  of  them  may 
be_a  mental  representation  of  an  individual  object. 

The  first  objection  which,  I  think,  must  occur  to  any 
one,  on  the  contemplation  of  this  definition,  is  that  it 
omits  the  main  and  characteristic  element  of  a  judgment 
and  of  a  proposition.     Do  we  never  judge  or  assert  any- 
thing but  our  mere  notions  of  things  ?    J)o  we  not  make 
judgments   and   assert   propositions    respecting    actual 
things?     A  Concept  is  a  mere  creation  of  the  mind:  it 
is  the  mental  representation  formed  within  us  of  a  phae- 
nomenon  ;  or  rather,  it  is  a  part  of  that  mental  repre- 
sentation, marked  off'  by  a  sign,  for  a  particular  purpose. 
But  when  we  judge  or  assert,  there  is  introduced  a  new 
element,  that  of  objective  reality,  and  a  new  mental  fact. 
Belief    Our  judgments,  and  the  assertions  which  express 
them,  do  not  enunciate  our  mere  mode  of  mentally  con- 
ceiving things,  but  our  conviction  or  persuasion  that  the 
facts  as  conceived  actually  exist :  and  a  theory  of  Judg- 
ments and  Propositions  which  does  not  take  account  of 
this,  cannot  be  the  true  theory.     In  the  words  of  Reid,* 
"  I  give  the  name  of  Judgment  to  every  determination 
"  of  the  mind  concerning  what  is  true  or  what  is  false. 
"  This,    I    think,   is  what  logicians,   from  the   days  of 
"  Aristotle,  have  called  judgment."     And   this   is   the 
very  element  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  definition  omits 
from  it. 

I  am  aware  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  would  have  an 
apparent  answer  to  this.  He  would,  I  suppose,  reply,  that 
the  belief  of  actual  reality,  implied  in  assent  to  a  proposi- 

*  Essays  on  the  latellectual  Powers,  Works,  p.  416. 
£  £  2 


420  '  JUDGMENT. 

tion,  is  not  left  out  of  account,  but  brought  to  account 
in  another  place.  The  belief,  he  would  say,  is  not 
inherent  in  the  judgment,  but  in  the  notions  which  are 
the  subject  and  predicate  of  the  judgment ;  these  being 
either  mental  representations  of  real  objects,  which  if 
represented  in  tiie  mind  at  all,  must  be  represented  as 
real,  or  Concepts  formed  by  a  comparison  of  real  objects, 
which  therefore  exist  in  the  mind  as  concepts  of  realities. 
Accordingly,  when  we  judge  and  make  assertions  respect- 
ing objects  known  to  be  imaginary,  the  judgments  are 
accompanied  with  no  belief  in  any  real  existence  except 
that  of  the  mental  images ;  what  our  author  calls  the 
"  presentations  of  phantasy."  When,  indeed,  a  judg- 
ment is  formed  or  an  assertion  is  made  respecting 
something  imaginary  which  is  supposed  to  be  real,  as  for 
instance  concerning  a  ghost,  there  is  a  belief  in  the  real 
existence  in  more  than  the  mental  image  ;  but  this  belief 
is  not  anything  superadded  to  the  comparison  of  con- 
cepts ;  it  already  existed  in  the  concepts  ;  a  ghost  was 
thought  as  something  having  a  real  existence. 

This,  at  least,  is  what  might  be  said  in  behalf  of  Sir 
W.  Hamilton,  though  he  has  not  himself  said  it.  But 
though  it  escapes  from  the  objection  again«t  omitting  the 
element  Belief  from  the  definition  of  Judgment,  it  does 
so  by  an  entire  inversion  of  the  logical  process  of  defini- 
tion. The  element  of  Belief,  or  Reality,  may  indeed  be 
in  the  concepts  ;  but  it  never  could  have  got  into  the 
concepts  if  it  had  not  first  been  in  the  judgments  by 
which  the  concepts  were  constructed.  If  the  belief  of 
reality  had  been  absent  from  those  judgments  originally, 
it  never  could  have  come  round  to  them  through  the 
concepts.  Belief  is  an  essential  element  in  a  judgment ; 
it  may  be  either  present  or  absent  in  a  concept.  Our 
author,  and  those  who  agree  with  him,  postpone  this  part 
of  the  subject  until  they  are  treating  of  the  distinction 
between  True  and  False  Propositions.  They  then  say, 
that  if  the  relation  which  is  judged  to  exist  between  the 
notions,  exists  between  the  corresponding  realities,  the 
proposition  is  true,  and  if  not,  false.     But  if  the  opera- 


JUDGMENT.  421 

tion  of  forming  a  judgment  or  a  proposition  includes 
anything  at  all,  it  includes  judging  that  the  judgment  or 
the  proposition  is  true.  The  recognition  of  it  as  true  is  not 
only  an  essential  part,  but  the  essential  element  of  it  as  a 
judgment;  leave  that  out,  and  there  remains  a  mere 
play  of  thought,  in  which  no  judgment  is  passed.  It  is 
impossible  to  separate  the  idea  of  Judgment  from  the 
idea  of  the  truth  of  a  judgment ;  for  every  judgment 
consists  in  judging  something  to  be  true.  The  eleinent 
Belief,  instead  of  being  an  accident  which  can  be  passed  in 
silence,  and  admitted  only  by  implication,  constitutes  the 
very  difference  between  a  judgment  and  any  othar  intel- 
lectual fact,  and  it  is  contrary  to  all  the  laws  of  Definition 
to  define  Judgment  by  anything  else.  The  very  meaning 
of  a  judgment,  or  a  proposition,  is  something  which  is 
capable  of  being  believed  or  disbelieved ;  which  can  be 
true  or  false ;  to  which  it  is  possible  to  say  yes  or  no. 
And  though  it  cannot  be  believed  until  it  has  been  con- 
ceived, or  (in  plain  terms)  understood,  the  real  object  of 
belief  is  not  the  concept,  or  any  relation  of  the  concept, 
but  the  fact  conceived.  That  fact  need  not  be  an  outward 
fact ;  it  may  be  a  fact  of  internal  or  niental  experience. 
But  even  then  the  fact  is  one  thing,  the  concept  of  it  is 
another,  and  the  judgment  is  concerning  the  fact,  not  the 
concept.  The  fact  may  be  purely  subjective,  as  that  I 
dreamed  something  last  night ;  but  the  judgment  is  not 
the  cognition  of  a  relation  between  the  presentation  [ 
and  the  concept  hacing  dreamed,  but  the  cognition  of  the 
real  memory  of  a  real  event. 

This  first,  and  insuperable  objection,  the  force  of  which 
will  be  seen  more  and  more  the  further  we  proceed,  is 
applicable  to  the  Conceptualist  doctrine  of  Judgment, 
howsoever  expressed,  and  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  as  one 
of  the  modes  of  expressing  that  doctrine.  There  are 
other  objections  special  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  form  of  it. 

In  what  I  have  called  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  first  theory 
of  judgment,  we  found  him  saying  that  the  comparison, 
ending  in  a  recognition  of  congruence  or  confliction,  may 
be  between  "  individual  thiugs"  as  well  as  between  con- 


422  JUDGMENT. 

cepts.  But  in  his  second  theory,  one  at  least  of  the  terms 
of  comparison  must  be  a  concept.  For  a  judgment,  accord- 
ing to  this  theory,  is  "  the  product  of  that  act  in  which. 
*'  we  pronounce  that  of  two  notions,  thought  as  subject 
"  and  predicate,  the  one  does  or  does  not  constitute  a 
"  part  of  the  other."  Now  a  concept,  that  is,  a  bundle 
of  attributes,  may  be  a  part  of  another  concept,  and 
may  be  a  part  of  our  mental  image  of  an  individual 
object ;  but  one  notion  of  an  individual  object  cannot  be 
a  part  of  another  notion  of  an  individual  object.  One 
object  may  be  an  integrant  part  of  another,  but  it 
cannot  be  a  part  in  Comprehension  or  in  Extension,  as 
these  words  are  understood  of  a  Concept.  St.  Paul's  is  an 
integrant  part  of  London,  but  neither  an  attribute  of  it, 
nor  an  object  of  which  it  is  predicable. 

Since,  therefore,  a  judgment,  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
second  theory,  is  the  recognition  of  the  relation  of  part 
and  whole,  either  between  two  concepts,  or  between  a  con- 
cept and  an. individual  presentation;  the  theory  supposes 
that  the  mind  furnishes  itself  with  concepts,  or  general 
notions,  before  it  begins  to  judge.  Now  this  is  not  only 
evidently  false,  but  the  contrary  is  asserted,  in  the  most 
decisive  terms,  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  himself.  He  affirms, 
and  it  is  denied  by  nobody,  that  every  Concept  is  built 
up  by  a  succession  of  judgments.  We  conceive  an  object 
mentally  as  having  such  and  such  an  attribute,  because 
we  have  first  judged  that  it  has  that  attribute  in  reality. 
Let  us  see  what  our  author  sa3's  on  this  point  in  his 
Lectures  on  Metaphysics.  He  says  that  there  is  a  judg- 
ment involved  in  every  mental  act. 

"  The  fourth*  condition  of  consciousness,  which  may 
"  be  assumed  as  very  generally  acknowledged,  is  that  it 
"  involves  judgment.  A  judgment  is  the  mental  act  by 
"  which  one  thing  is  affirmed  or  denied  of  another.  It 
"  may  to  some  seera  strange  that  consciousness,  the 
"  simple  and  primary  act  of  intelligence,  should  be  a 
"judgment,  which  philosophers  in  general"  (including 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  in  his  second  theory)  "  have  viewed  as 

*  Lectures,  i.  204. 


JDDGMENT.  423 

"  a  compound  and  derivative  operation.  Tliis  is,  how- 
"  ever,  altogether  a  mistake.  A  judgment  is,  as  I  shall 
"  hereafter  show  you,  a  simple  act  of  mind,  for  every  act 
"  of  mind  implies  a  judgment.  Do  we  perceive  or  imagine 
"  without  affirming,  in  tlie  act,  the  external  or  internal 
"  existence  of  the  object  ?  Now  these  fundamental  affir- 
"  mations  are  the  affirmations, — in  other  words,  the  judg- 
"  ments, — of  consciousness." 

And  in  a  subsequent  part  of  his  Course  :  "  You  will* 
"  recollect  that,  when  treating  of  Consciousnessingeneral, 
"  I  stated  to  you  that  consciousness  necessarily  involves 
"  a  judgment ;  and  as  every  act  of  mind  is  an  act  of 
"  consciousness,  every  act  of  mind,  consequently,  involves 
"  a  judgment.  A  consciousness  is  necessarily  the  con- 
"  sciousness  of  a  determinate  something,  and  we  cannot 
"  be  conscious  of  anything  without  virtually  affirming 
"  its  existence,  that  is,  judging  it  to  be.  Consciousness 
"  is  thus  primarily  a  judgment  or  affirmation  of  existence. 
"  Again,  consciousness  is  not  merely  the  affirmation  of 
"  naked  existence,  but  the  affirmation  of  a  certain  quali- 
*'  fied  or  determinate  existence.  We  are  conscious  that 
"  we  exist,  only  in  and  through  our  consciousness  that 
"  we  exist  in  this  or  that  particular  state — that  we  are 
**  so  and  so  affected, — so  and  so  active  :  and  we  are  only 
"  conscious  of  this  or  that  particular  state  of  existence, 
"  inasmuch  as  we  discriminate  it  as  different  from  some 
"  other  state  of  existence,  of  which  we  have  been  previously 
"  conscious  and  are  now  reminiscent ;  but  such  a  dis- 
"  crimination  supposes,  in  consciousness,  the  affirmation 
"  of  the  existence  of  one  state  of  a  specific  character,  and 
"  the  negation  of  another.  On  this  ground  it  was  that 
"  I  maintained,  that  consciousness  necessarily  involves, 
"  besides  recollection,  or  rather  a  certain  continuity  of 
"  representation,  also  judgment  and  comparison  ;  and 
*'  consequently,  that,  so  far  from  comparison  or  judgment 
*'  being  a  process  always  subsequent  to  the  acquisition  oj 
"  knowledge  through  perception  and  self-consciousness,  it  is 
"  involved  as  a  condition  of  the  acquisitive  process."  But 
•  Lectures,  ii  277,  278. 


424  JUDGMENT. 

if  judgment  is  a  comparison  of  two  concepts,  or  of  a 
concept  and  an  individual  object,  and  a  recognition  that 
one  of  tbem  is  a  part  of  (or  even  merely  congruent  with) 
the  other,  it  must  be  a  process  "  always  subsequent  to 
the  acquisition  of  knowledge/'  or,  in  other  words,  to 
the  formation  of  Concepts.  The  theory  of  Judgment 
in  the  third  volume  of  the  Lectures,  belongs  to  a  dif- 
ferent mode  of  thinking  altogether  from  the  theory  of 
Consciousness  in  the  first  and  second  ;  and  when  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  was  occupied  with  either  of  them,  he  must 
have  temporarily  forgotten  the  other. 

But  in  the  third  volume  itself  the  same  inconsistency 
is  obtruded  on  us  still  more  openly.  We  are  there  told 
in  plain  words,*  "  Both  concepts  and  reasonings  may  be 
"  reduced  to  judgments  :  for  the  act  of  judging,  that  is, 
"  the  act  of  affirming  or  denying  one  thing  of  another 
"  in  thought,  is  that  in  which  the  Understanding  or  Fa- 
"  culty  of  comparison  is  essentially  expressed.  A  con- 
"  cept  is  a  judgment :  for,  on  the  one  hand,  it  is  nothing 
"  tiut  the  resutt  of  a  foregone  judgment  or  series  of  judgments 
"  fixed  aiidrecordedin  a  z^-or*^,  a  sign,  and  it  is  only  ampliiied. 
"  by  the  annexation  of  a  new  attribute,  through  a  con- 
"  tinuance  of  the  same  process.  On  the  other  hand,  as  a 
"  concept  is  thus  the  synthesis  or  complexion,  and  the  record, 
"  J  may  add,  of  one  or  more  prior  acts  of  judgment,  it  can, 
"  it  is  evident,  be  analysed  into  these  again  ;  every  con- 
"  cept  is,  in  fact,  a  judgment  or  a  fasciculus  of  judgments, 
"  — -these  judgments  only  not  explicitly  developed  in 
"  thought,  and  not  formally  expressed  in  terms." 

That  the  same  philosopher  should  have  written  these 
words,  and  a  little  more  than  a  hundred  pages  alter 
should  have  defined  a  judgment  as  the  result  of  a  com- 
parison of  concepts,  either  between  themselves,  or  with 
individual  objects,  is,  I  think,  the  very  crown  of  the  self- 
contradictions  which  we  have  found  to  be  sown  so  thickly 
in  SSir  W.  Hamilton's  speculations.  Coming  from  a 
thinker  of  such  ability,  it  almost  makes  one  despair 
of  one's  own  intellect  and  that  of  mankind,  and  feel  as 

*  Lectures,  iii.  117. 


JUDGMENT.  425 

if  the  attainment  of  truth  on  any  of  the  more  compli- 
cated subjects  of  thought  were  impossible. 

It  is  necessary  to  renounce  one  of  these  theories  or 
the  other.  Either  a  concept  is  not  the  "  synthesis  and 
record  of  one  or  more  prior  acts  of  judgment,"  or  a  judg- 
ment is  not,  at  least  in  all  cases,  the  recognition  of  a 
relation  of  which  one  or  both  of  the  terms  are  Concepts. 
The  least  that  could  be  required  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
would  be  so  to  modify  his  doctrine  as  to  admit  two  kinds 
of  judgment:  the  one  kind,  that  by  which  concepts  are 
formed,  the  other  that  which  succeeds  their  formation. 
When  concepts  have  been  formed,  and  we  subsequently 
proceed  to  analyse  them,  then,  he  might  say,  we  form 
judgments  which  recognise  one  concept  as  a  whole,  of 
which  another  is  a  part.  But  the  judgments  by  which 
we  constructed  the  concepts,  and  every  subsequent  judg- 
ment by  which,  to  use  his  own  words,  we  amplify  them 
by  the  addition  of  a  new  attribute,  have  nothing  to  do 
with  comparison  of  concepts :  it  is  the  Anschauungen, 
the  intuitions,  the  presentations  of  experience,  which  we 
in  this  case  compare  and  judge.* 

Take,  for  instance.  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  own  example 
of  a  judgment,  "  Water  rusts  iron  :"  and  let  us  suppose 
this  truth  to  be  new  to  us.  Is  it  not  like  a  mockery  to 
say  with  our  author,  that  we  know  this  truth  by  com- 
paring "  the  thoughts,  water,  iron,  and  rusting?"     Ought 

*  This  mode  of  escape  from  contradiction  is  the  one  which  has,  in  sub- 
stance, been  resorted  to  by  Mr.  Manael.  He  distinguishes  what  he  teims 
Psychological  from  what  he  denominates  Logical  judgments.  Psycholo- 
gical judgments  merely  assert  that  some  object  of  consciousness,  either 
external  or  internal,  is  present :  they  "  may  be  generally  stated  in  the 
proposition.  This  is  here."  These  are  the  only  judgments  which  are 
implied  in,  and  necessary  to,  the  formation  of  Concepts  :  and  these  judg- 
ments, as  they  assert  a  matter  of  present  consciousness,  are  necessarily 
true.  "  But  the  psychological  judgment  must  not  be  confounded  with  the 
"  logical.  The  former  is  the  judgment  of  a  relation  between  the  conscious 
"  subject  and  the  immediate  object  of  consciousness:  the  latter  is  the 
"  judgment  of  a  relation  which  two  objects  of  thought  bear  to  each 
"  other.  .  .  .  The  logical  judgment  necessarily  contains  two  concepts,  and 
"  hence  must  be  regarded  as  logically  and  chronologically  posterior  to  the 
"  conception,  which  requires  one  only."     (Prolegomena  Logica,  pp.  53-56). 

But  the  operation  by  which  a  concept  is  built  up,  8U|)poses  much  more 
than  a  cognition  of  the  present  existeuce  of  a  fact  or  facts  of  conscious- 


426  JUDGMENT. 

he  not  to  have  said  the  facts,  water,  iron,  and  rusting  ? 
and  even  then,  is  comparing  the  proper  name  for  the 
mental  operation  ?  We  do  not  examine  whether  three 
tl^ oughts  agree,  but  whether  three  outward  facts  coexist. 
If  we  lived  till  doomsday  we  should  never  find  the  pro- 
position that  water  rusts  iron  in  our  concepts,  if  we  had 
not  first  found  it  in  the  outward  phaenomena.  The 
proposition  expresses  a  sequence,  and  what  we  call  a 
causation,  not  between  our  concepts,  but  between  the 
two  sensible  presentations  of  moistened  iron  and  rust. 
When  we  have  already  judged  this  sequence  to  exist  out- 
side us,  that  is,  independently  of  our  intellectual  combi- 
nations, we  know  it,  and  once  known,  it  may  find  its  way 
into  our  concepts.  But  we  cannot  elicit  out  of  a  con- 
cept any  judgment  which  we  have  not  first  put  into  it ; 
which  we  have  not  consciously  assented  to,  in  the  act  of 
forming  the  concept.  Whenever,  therefore,  we  form  a 
new  judgment — judge  a  truth  new  to  us — the  judgment 
is  not  a  recognition  of  a  relation  between  concepts,  but 
of  a  succession,  a  coexistence,  or  a  similitude,  between 
facts. 

This  is  the  smallest  sacrifice  on  the  part  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  theory  of  judgment,  which  would  satisfy 
his  theory  of  Consciousness.  But  when  thus  reconciled 
with  a  part  of  his  system  with  which  it  now  conflicts,  it 
would  not  be  the  better  founded.  It  might  still  be 
chased  from  point  to  point,  unable  to  make  a  stand  any- 
where. For  let  us  next  suppose,  that  the  judgment  is 
not  new ;  that  the  truth.  Water  rusts  iron,  is  known  to 
us  of  old.     When  we  again  think  of  it,   and  think  it 

ness,  and  a  judgment  in  the  form,  "  This  is  here."  It  supposes  the  whole 
process  of  comparing  I'acts  of  consciousness,  and  recognising,  or  in  other 
words,  judging,  in  what  points  they  resemble.  It  implies  that  the  mind, 
in  its  '•  psychological"  judgments,  does  to  the  Intuitions  or  Presentations 
everything  which  it  is  supposed  to  do  to  the  Concepts  in  the  "  logical" 
ones.  Consequently  the  distinction  between  Mr.  Mansel's  two  kinds  of 
judgments  is  in  their  matter  only,  not  in  the  mental  operation,  and  is 
therefore,  as  he  would  say,  extra-logical ;  to  which  I  will  add,  insignificant. 
it  will  be  shown  in  the  text  that  there  is  no  psychological  difference 
between  the  two,  and  that  the  discrimination  of  one  class  of  judgments  as 
conversant  with  Presentations  and  another  with  Concepts,  and  the  attribu- 
tion to  the  latter  class  of  the  name  of  logical,  are  founded  on  a  false  theory. 


\\  JUDGMENT.  427 

as  a  truth,  and  assent  to  it,  should  we  even  then  give  a 
correct  account  of  what  passes  in  our  mind,  by  callins^ 
this  act  of  judgment  a  comparison  of  our  thoughts — our 
concepts — our  notions^of  water,  rust,  and  iron  ?  We 
do  not  compare  our  artificial  mental  constructions,  but 
consult  our  direct  remembrance  of  facts.  We  call  to 
mind  that  we  have  seen,  or  learned  from  credible  testi- 
mony, that  when  iron  is  long  in  contact  with  water,  it 
rusts.  The  question  is  not  one  of  notions,  but  of  beliefs  ; 
belief  of  past  and  expectation  of  future  presentations  of 
sense.  Of  course  it  is  psychologically  true  that  when  £ 
believe,  I  have  a  notion  of  that  which  I  believe ;  but  the 
ultimate  appeal  is  not  to  the  notion,  but  to  the  presenta- 
tion or  intuition.  If  I  am  in  any  doubt,  what  is  the 
question  I  ask  myself  5^  Is  it — Do  I  think  of,  or  figure 
to  myself,  water  as  rusting  iron  ?  or  is  it — Did  I  ever 
perceive,  and  have  other  people  perceived,  that  water 
rusts  iron  ?  'J'here  are  persons,  no  doubt,  whose  crite- 
rion of  judgment  is  the  relation  between  their  own  con- 
cepts, but  these  are  not  the  persons  whose  judgments 
the  world  has  usually  found  worth  adopting.  If  the 
question  between  Copernicus  and  Ptolemy  had  depended 
on  whether  we  conceive  the  earth  moving  and  the  sun  at 
rest,  or  the  sun  moving  and  the  earth  at  rest,  I  am 
afraid  the  victory  would  have  been  with  Ptolemy. 

But,  again,  even  if  judging  were  entirely  a  notional 
operation,  consisting  of  the  recognition  of  some  relation 
between  concepts,  it  remains  to  be  proved  that  the  rela- 
tion is  that  of  Whole  and  Part.  Could  it,  even  then,  be 
said,  that  every  judgment  in  which  I  predicate  one  thing 
of  another,  on  the  faith  of  previous  judgments  recorded, 
as  our  author  says,  in  the  concepts,  consists  in  recog- 
nising that  one  of  the  concepts  includes  the  other  as  a 
part  of  itself?  When  I  judge  that  Socrates  is  mortal, 
or  that  all  men  are  mortal,  does  the  judgment  consist 
in  being  conscious  that  my  concept  mortal  is  part  of  my 
representation  of  Socrates,  or  of  my  concept  man  ? 

This  doctrine  ignores  the  iamous  distinction,  admitted, 
I  suppose,  in  some  shape  or  other,  by  all  philosophers. 


428 


JUDGMENT. 


but  most  familiar  to  modern  metapliysics  in  the  form  in 
which   it  is   stated  by  Kant — the  distinction   between 
Analytical  and  Synthetical  judgments.    Analytical  judg- 
ments are  supposed  to  unfold  the  contents  of  a  concept ; 
affirming    explicitly    of  a   class,   attributes    which   were 
already  part  of  the  corresponding  concept,  and  may  be 
brought  out  into  distinct  consciousness  by  mere  analysis 
of  it.     Synthetical  judgments,  on  the  contrary,  affirm  of 
a  class,   attributes   which  are  not  in  the  concept,  and 
which  we  therefore  do  not  and  cannot  judge  to  be  a  part 
of  the  concept,  but  only  to  be  conjoined  in  fact  with  the 
attributes    composing    the    concept      This    distinction, 
though  obtruded  upon  our  author  by  many  of  the  writers 
with  whom  he  was  familar,  has  so  little  in  common  with 
his  mode  of  thought,  that  he  only  slightly  refers  to  it, 
in  a  very  few  passages  of  his  works :  in   one  of  these, 
however,*  he  speaks  of  it  as  of  something  ver}'  impor- 
tant, expresses  his  preference  for  the  terms  Explicative 
and  Ampliativft  as   names  for  it,  and  discusses,  not  the 
distinction  itself,  but  its  history  ;  apparently  unconscious 
that  his  own  theory  entirely  does  away  with  it.     Accord- 
ing to  that,  all  judgments  are  analytical,  or,  as  he  pre- 
fers to  say,  explicative.     Even  giving  up  so  much  of  his 
theory  as  contradicts  his  own  doctrine  on  the  formation 
of   concepts,    the  part  remaining  would  compel  him  to 
maintain   that   all  judgments  which    are   not    new    are 
analytical,  and  that  synthetical  judgments  are  limited  to 
truths,  or  supposed  truths,  which  we  learn  for  the  first 
time. 

This  discrepancy  between  our  author  and  almost  all 
philosophers,  even  of  his  own  general  way  of  thinking, 
(including,  among  the  rest,  Mr,  Mansel),  arises  from  the 
fact,  that  he  understands  by  concept  something  diti'erent 
from  what  they  have  usually  understood  by  it.  The 
concept  of  a  class,  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  acceptation  of 
the  term,  includes  all  the  attributes  which  we  have 
judged,  and  still  judge,  to  be  common  to  the  whole  class. 
it  means,  in  short,    our  entire  knowledge  of  the  class. 

*  Dissertations  on  Eeid,  pp.  787,  788. 


JUDGMENT.  429 

But,  with  philosophers  in  general,  the  concept  of  the 
class  as  such, — my  concept  of  man,  for  example,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  my  mental  representation  of  an  indivi- 
dual man, — includes,  not  all  the  attributes  which  I 
ascribe  to  man,  but  such  of  them  only  as  the  classifica- 
tion is  grounded  on,  and  as  are  implied  in  the  meaning 
of  the  name.  Man  is  a  living  being,  or  Man  is  rational, 
they  would  call  analytical  judgments,  because  the  attri- 
butes of  life  and  rationality  are  of  the  number  of  those 
which  are  already  given  in  the  concept  Man :  but  Man 
is  mortal,  they  would  account  synthetical,  because,  fa- 
miliar as  the  fact  is,  it  is  not  already  affirmed  in  the 
very  name  Man,  but  has  to  be  superadded  in  the  pre- 
dicate. 

It  is  quite  lawful  for  a  philosopher  (though  seldom 
prudent)  to  alter  the  meaning  of  a  word,  provided  he 
gives  fair  notice  of  his  intention  ;  but  he  is  bound,  if  he 
does  so,  to  remain  consistent  with  himself  in  the  new 
meaning,  and  not  to  transfer  to  it  propositions  which  are 
only  true  in  the  old.  This  condition  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
does  not  observe.  It  often  happens  that  different  opinions 
of  his  belong  to  different  and  inconsistent  systems  of 
thought,  apparently  through  his  retaining  from  former 
writers  some  doctrine,  the  grounds  of  which  he  has,  by 
another  doctrine,  subverted.  His  whole  theory  of  Con- 
cepts being  infected  by  an  inconsequence  of  this  descrip- 
tion, the  retention  of  all  the  Conceptualist  conclusions 
along  with  Nominalist  premises,  it  is  no  wonder  if 
further  oversights  of  the  same  kind  meet  us  in  every 
part  of  the  details.  The  following  is  one  of  the  most 
palpable.  As  we  just  mentioned,  the  concept  of  a  class 
in  our  author's  sense,  includes  all  the  attributes  of  the 
class,  so  I'ar  as  the  thinker  is  acquainted  with  them  ;  the 
whole  of  the  thinker's  knowledge  of  the  class.  This  is 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  own  doctrine ;  but  along  with  it  he 
retains  a  doctrine  belonging  to  the  other  meaning  of 
Concept,  which  I  have  contrasted  with  his.  "  The* 
"  exposition  of  the  Comprehension  of  a  notion  is  called 

•  Lectures,  m.  143. 


430  JUDGMENT. 

"  its  Definition :"  and  again*  "Definition  is  the  analysis 
"  of  a  complex  concept  into  its  component  parts  or 
"  attributes."  But  a  thing  is  not  analysed  into  its  com- 
ponent parts  if  any  of  the  parts  are  left  out.  The  two 
opinions  taken  together  lead,  therefore,  to  the  remark- 
able consequence,  that  the  definition  of  a  class  ought  to 
include  the  whole  of  what  is  known  of  the  class.  Those 
who  mean  by  the  concept  not  all  known  attributes  of 
the  class,  but  such  only  as  are  included  in  the  connota- 
tion of  the  name,  may  be  permitted  to  say  of  a  Defini- 
tion that  it  is  the  analysis  of  the  concept :  but  to  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  this  was  not  permissible.  To  crown  the  incon- 
sistenc}',  he  still  presentsf  the  stock  example,  Man 
is  a  rational  animal,  as  a  gocd  definition,  and  a  typical 
specimen  of  what  a  Definition  is  ;  as  if  the  notions 
animal  and  rational  exhausted  the  whole  of  the  concept 
Man,  according  to  his  meaning  of  Concept — the  entire 
sum  of  the  attributes  common  to  the  class.  It  would 
hardl}^  be  believed,  prior  to  a  minute  examination  of  his 
writings,  how  much  vagueness  of  thought,  leading  to 
the  unsuspecting  admission  of  opposite  doctrines  in  the 
same  breath,  lurks  under  the  specious  appearance  of 
philosophical  precision  which  distinguishes  him.j 

To  return,  from  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  self-contradictions, 
to  the  merits  of  the  question  itself;  the  word  Judgment, 
by  universal  consent,  is  coextensive  with  the  word  Pro- 
position :  a  Judgment  must  be  so  defined  that  a  Pro- 
position shall  be  the  expression  of  it  in  words.  Now,  if 
a  Judgment  expresses  a  relation  between  Concepts  (which 

*  Lectures,  iii.  151.  f  Ibid.  pp.  143,  144. 

X  In  his  non-recognition  of  the  difference  between  Analytical  and 
Synthetical  judgments,  it  is  already  implied  that  he  never  recognises  the 
Connotation  of  Names;  which  in  itself  is  enough  to  vitiate  his  whole 
logical  system,  and  is  a  great  point  of  inieriority  in  him  to  the  best 
Conceptualist  thinkers,  who  do  recognise  it,  though  in  a  misleading 
phraseology.  To  the  same  cause  may  be  ascribed  the  extremely  vulgar 
character  of  the  explanation  of  some  of  the  leading  metaphysical  terms, 
in  his  eighth  Lecture.  For  example,  the  distinction  between  essential  and 
accidental  qualities  he  df  fines  thus — that  the  essential  qualities  of  a  thing 
are  those  "  which  it  cannot  lose  without  ceasing  to  be."  This,  which  is  a 
retrogression  from  Conceptualism  to  Eealism,  does  but  prove  that  he 


JUDGMKNT.  431 

for  the  purpose  of  the  present  discussion  I  have  con- 
ceded) the  corresponding  Proposition  represents  that 
same  relation  by  means  of  names :  the  names,  therefore, 
must  be  signs  of  the  concepts,  and  the  concepts  must  be 
the  meaning  of  the  names.  To  make  this  tenable,  the 
Concept  must  be  so  construed  as  to  consist  of  those 
attributes  only  which  are  connoted  by  the  name.  Cor- 
poreity, life,  rationality,  and  any  other  attributes  of  man 
which  are  part  of  the  meaning  of  the  word,  insomuch 
that  where  those  attributes  were  not,  we  should  with- 
hold the  name  of  man — these  are  part  of  the  con- 
cept. But  mortality,  and  all  the  other  human  attributes 
which  are  the  subject  of  treatises  either  on  the  human 
body  or  on  human  nature,  are  not  in  the  concept,  be- 
cause we  do  not  affirm  them  of  any  individual  by  merely 
calling  him  a  man ;  they  are  so  much  additional  know- 
ledge. The  concept  Man  is  not  tlje  sum  of  all  the 
attributes  of  a  man,  but  only  of  the  essential  attributes — 
of  those  which  constitute  him  a  man  ;  in  other  words, 
those  on  which  the  class  Man  is  grounded,  and  which 
are  connoted  by  the  name — what  used  to  be  called  the 
essence  of  Man,  that  without  which  Man  cannot  be,  or 
in  other  words,  would  not  be  what  he  is  called.  With- 
out mortality,  or  without  thirty-two  teeth,  he  would 
still  be  called  a  man  :  we  should  not  say.  This  is  not  a 
man;  we  should  say.  This  man  is  not  mortal,  or  has 
fewer  than  thirty-two  teeth. 

Instead,  therefore,  of  saying  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
that  the  attributes  composing  the  concept  of  the  predi- 
cate are  part  of  those  which  compose  the  concept  of  the 

simply  transcribed  his  definition  from  the  Realistic  Schoolmen.  In  a 
later  part  of  his  Lectures  (iv.  11)  he,  more  sito,  forgets  this  definition,  and 
replaces  it  by  one  of  his  own ;  but  in  this  second  definition  he  betrays 
that  he  never  saw  the  genuine  meaning  which  lay  under  the  distinction, 
so  badly  expressed  by  the  schoolmen  in  the  language  of  a  false  system. 
Sir  W.  Hamilton,  in  distinguishing  Essential  from  Unessential  properties, 
means  only  the  difference  between  attributes  of  the  whole  genus,  and 
those  confined  to  some  of  its  species.  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  knowledge  of 
the  scholastic  writings  was  extraordinary ;  but  many  students  of  them  who 
had  not  a  tfthe  of  that  knowledge,  have  brought  back  and  appropriated 
much  more  of  the  important  materials  for  thought  which  those  writings 
abundantly  contain. 


432  JUDGMENT. 

subject,  we  ought  to  say,  they  are  either  a  part,  or  are 
invariably  conjoined  with  them,  not  in  our  conception, 
but  in  fact.  Propositions  in  which  the  concept  of  the 
predicate  is  part  of  the  concept  of  the  subject,  or,  to  ex- 
press ourselves  more  philosophically,  in  which  the  attri- 
butes connoted  by  the  predicate  are  part  of  those  connoted 
by  the  subject,  are  a  kind  of  Identical  Propositions  :  they 
convey  no  information,  but  at  most  remind  us  of  what, 
if  we  understood  the  word  which  is  the  subject  of  the 
proposition,  we  knew  as  soon  as  the  word  was  pro- 
nounced. Propositions  of  this  kind  are  either  detini- 
nitions,  or  parts  of  definitions.  These  judgments  are 
analytical :  they  analyse  the  connotation  of  the  subject- 
name,  and  predicate  separately  the  different  attributes 
which  the  name  asserts  collectively.  All  other  affirma- 
tive judgments  are  synthetical,  and  affirm  that  some  at- 
tribute or  set  of  attributes  is,  not  a  part  of  those  con- 
noted by  the  subject-name,  but  an  invariable  accompani- 
ment of  them.* 

There  remains  something  to  be  said  on  another  very 
prominent  feature  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory  of  Judg- 
ment. Having  said,  that  in  every  judgment  we  com- 
pare  "  two  notions,  thought  as  subject  and  predicate," 

*  This  is  perfectly  understood  by  Mr.  Mansel,  who  says  (Prolegomena 
Logica,  p.  68),  "  When  I  assert  that  A  is  B,  I  do  not  mean  that  the 
"  attributes  constituting  the  concept  A  are  identical  with  those  constituting 
"  the  concept  B,  for  this  is  only  true  in  identical  judgments  ;  but  that  the 
"  object  in  which  the  one  set  of  attributes  is  found,  is  the  same  as  that  in 
'•  which  the  other  is  found.  To  assert  that  all  philosophers  are  liable  to 
"  error  is  not  to  assert  that  the  signification  of  the  term  philosopher  is 
"  identical  with  that  of  liable  to  eiTor;  but  that  the  attributes  compre- 
"  bended  in  these  two  distinct  terms  are  in  some  manner  united  in  the 
"  same  subject."  What  Mr.  Mansel  here  enunciates  distinctly,  was 
contained,  though  less  distinctly,  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  first  theory  of  judg- 
ment, especially  as  he  illustrated  it  from  Krug.  In  adhering  to  that  first 
theory,  as  well  as  in  limiting  the  concept  to  the  attributes  connoted  by  the 
name — for  that  limitation  clearly  results  from  his  definition  of  a  Concept 
(p.  60),  in  combination  with  other  passages — Mr.  Mansel,  as  it  appears  to 
me,  is  much  nearer  the  truth  than  Sir  W.  Hamilton ;  and  would  perhaps 
be  nearer  still,  if  he  were  not  entangled  in  the  meshes  of  the  Hamiltonian 
phraseology. 

An  example  how  that  phraseology  controls  him,  in  his  strange  assertion 
(pp.  184,  185)  that  every  concept  "  must  contain  a  plurality  of  attributes" 
as  a  condition  of  its  conceivability ;  for  a  simple  idea,  like  a  summum  genus, 


JUDGMENT.  433 

and  pronounce  that  "the  one  does  or  does  not  constitute 
a  part  of  the  other,"  he  adds,  "  either  in  the  quantity  of 
Extension,  or  in  the  quantity  of  Comprehension."*  He 
developes  this  distinction  as  follows  if — 

"  If  the  subject  or  determined  notion  be  viewed  as 
"the  containing  whole,  we  have  an  Intensive  or  Com- 
"  prehensive  proposition;  if  the  Predicate  or  determining: 
"  notion  be  viewed  as  the  containing  whole,  we  have  an 

"  Extensive  proposition The  relation  of  subject 

"and  predicate  is  contained  within  that  of  whole  and 
"  part,  for  we  can  always  view  either  the  determining  or 
"  the  determined  notion  as  the  whole  which  contains  the 
"  other.  The  whole,  however,  which  the  subject  consti- 
"  tutes,  and  the  whole  which  the  predicate  constitutes, 
"  are  different,  being  severally  determined  by  the  oppo- 
"  site  quantities  of  comprehension  and  of  extension; 
"and  as  subject  and  predicate  necessarily  stand  to  each 
"  other  in  the  relation  of  these  inverse  quantities,  it  is 
"  manifestly  a  matter  of  indifference,  in  so  far  as  the 
"  meaning  is  concerned,  whether  we  view  the  subject  as 
"  the  whole  of  comprehension  which  contains  the  predi- 

is  by  itself  inconceivable."  Inconceivable  it  truly  is,  bxxt  not  in  any  sense 
in  which  conceivability  is  required  of  a  concept :  only  in  the  sense  of  not 
being  conceivable  separately.  "  Simple  ideas  are  never  conceived  as  such, 
but  only  as  forming  parts  of  a  complex  object;"  in  other  words,  they  are 
inconceivable  in  the  sense  in  which,  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
doctrine  and  Mr.  Hansel's  own,  all  concepts  are  inconceivable. 

From  a  similar  entanglement,  although  his  account  of  Definition  and 
Division  is  decidedly  better  than  Sir  W.  Hamilton's,  he  follows  that  philo- 
sopher in  treating  the  latter  logical  operation  as  a  division  of  the  Concept : 
as  if  the  concept  were  divided  by  dividing  the  things  which  it  is  predicable 
of  (pp.  191-194). 

Dr.  M'Cosh  thinks  (p.  291)  that  there  are  judgments  (other  than  those 
in  which  the  predicates  are  proper  names)  which  do  not  affirm  or  deny 
attributes,  viz.  those  in  which  we  compare  what  he  terms  "  mere  Abstracts.  ' 
"  We  cannot  call  such  attributive;  thus,  there  would  be  no  propriety  in 
"  saying  that  4  is  an  attribute  of  2-|-2."  But  is  not  making  4,  an  attribute 
of  2+2  ?  Further  on  (p.  338)  he  says,  that  the  predicate  in  this  clas-*  of 
propositions  "has  no  quantity  or  extension,  for  it  is  not  a  class  notion. 
"  When  we  say  that  3x3  =  9,  neither  subject  nor  predicate  has  an  in- 
"  definite  number  of  objects  embraced  in-  it."  The  objects  embraced  in  9 
are  nine  apples,  nine  marbles,  nine  hours,  nine  miles,  and  all  the  other 
aggregations  of  which  nine  can  be  predicated.  Every  numeral  is  the 
name  of  a  class,  and  a  most  comprehensive  class,  consisting  of  things  of 
all  imaginable  qualities.  And  the  same  observation  applies  to  3  X  3. 
*  Lectures,  iii.  229.  f  Ibid.  pp.  231-233, 

¥  V 


434  JUDGMENT. 

*'  cate,  or  the  predicate  as  the  whole  of  extension  whidi 
"  contains  the  subject.  In  point  of  fact,  in  single  pro- 
"  positions  it  is  rarely  apparent  which  of  the  two  wholes 
"is  meant;  for  the  copula  is,  est,  &c.,  equally  denotes 
"  the  one  form  of  the  relation  or  the  other.  Thus,  in  the 
"  proposition  nian  is  two-legged, — the  copula  here  is  con- 
"  vertible  with  comprehends  or  contains  in  it,  for  the  pro- 
"  position  means  man  contains  in  it  two-legged,  that  is,  the 
"  subject  man  as  an  intensive  whole  or  complex  notion, 
"  comprehends  as  a  part  the  predicate  two-legged.  Again,  in 
"  the  proposition,  man  is  a  biped,  the  copula  corresponds 
**  to  contained  under,  for  this  proposition  is  tantamount 
"  to  man  is  contained  under  biped, — that  is,  the  predicate 
"  biped,  as  an  extensive  whole  or  class,  contains  under 
"it  as  a  part  the  subject  man.  But  in  point  of  fact, 
"  neither  of  the  two  propositions  unambiguously  shows 
"  whether  it  is  to  be  viewed  as  of  an  intensive  or  of  an 
"extensive  purport;  nor  in  a  single  proposition  is  this 
"  of  any  moment.  All  that  can  be  said  is  that  the  one 
"  form  of  expression  is  better  accommodated  to  express 
"  the  one  kind  of  proposition,  the  other  better  accoramo- 
"  dated  to  express  the  other.  It  is  only  when  proposi- 
"tious  are  connected  into  syllogisms,  that  it  becomes 
"  evident  whether  the  subject  or  the  predicate  be  the 
"  whole  in  or  under  which  the  other  is  contained ;  and 
"  it  is  only  as  thus  constituting  two  different- — two  con- 
"trasted,  forms  of  reasoning — forms  the  most  general, 
"  as  under  each  of  these  every  other  is  included, — that 
"  the  distinction  becomes  necessary  in  regard  to  concepts 
"  and  propositions." 

I  shall  not  insist  on  such  of  the  objections  to  this 
passage  as  have  been  sufficiently  stated  ;  the  impropriety, 
tor  instance,  of  saying  that  the  notion  Man  contains  the 
predicate  two-legged,  when  that  attribute  is  evidently 
not  part  of  the  signification  of  the  word ;  or  that  the 
meaning  of  a  proposition  is,  that  an  attribute  is  part 
of  a  notion :  which,  the  first  time  it  is  observed,  it  cannot 
possibly  be,  and  at  no  time  is  this  the  thing  asserted  by 
a  proposition,  unless  by  those  which  are  avowedly  defini- 


JUDGMENT.  435 

tions.  All  these  considerations  I  at  present  forego  :  and 
I  will  even  give  our  author's  theory  its  necessary  cor- 
rection, by  restoring  to  Propositions  the  alternative 
meaning  which  belongs  to  them,  namely,  that  a  certain 
attribute  is  either  part  of  a  given  set  of  attributes,  or 
invariably  coexists  with  them.  Having  thus  dissociated 
tlie  doctrine  in  the  quotation  from  all  errors  which  are 
incidental  and  not  essential  to  it,  we  may  state  it  as 
follows  : — Every  proposition  is  capable  of  being  under- 
stood in  two  meanings,  which  involve  one  another,  inas- 
much as  if  either  of  them  is  true  the  other  is  so,  but 
which  are  nevertheless  different ;  of  which  only  one  may 
be,  and  commonly  is,  in  the  mind ;  and  the  words  used 
do  not  always  show  which.  Thus,  All  men  are  bipeds, 
may  either  mean,  that  the  objects  called  men  are  all  of 
them  numbered  among  the  objects  called  bipeds,  which 
is  interpreting  the  proposition  in  Extension ;  or  that  the 
attribute  of  having  two  feet  is  one  of,  or  coexists  with, 
the  attributes  which  compose  the  notion  Man :  which  is 
interpreting  the  proposition  in  Comprehension. 

I  maintain,  that  these  two  supposed  meanings  of  the 
proposition  are  not  two  matters  of  fact  or  of  thought, 
reciprocally  inferrible  from  one  another,  but  one  and  the 
same  fact,  written  in  different  ways  ;  that  the  supposed 
meaning  in  Extension  is  not  a  meaning  at  all,  until  in- 
terpreted by  the  meaning  in  Comprehension;  that  all 
concepts  and  general  names  which  enter  into  Proposi- 
tions, require  to  be  construed  in  Comprehension, -and 
that  their  Comprehension  is  the  whole  of  their  meaning. 

That  the  meaning  in  Extension  follows  if  the  mean- 
ing in  Comprehension  is  granted,  is  a  point  which  both 
sides  are  agreed  in.  If  the  attribute  signified  by  biped 
is  either  one  of,  or  always  conjoined  with,  the  attributes 
signified  by  man,  we  are  entitled  to  assert  that  the  class 
Man  is  included  in,  is  a  part  of,  the  class  Biped.  But 
my  position  is,  that  this  second  assertion  is  not  a  conclu- 
sion from,  but  a  mere  repetition  of,  the  first.  For  what  is 
the  second  assertion,  if  we  leave  out  of  it  all  reference  to 
the  attributes  ?     It  can  then  only  mean,  that  we  have 

r  F  2 


436  JUDGMENT. 

ascertained  the  fact  independently  of  the  attributes — that 
is,  that  we  have  examined  the  aggregate  whole  "  all  men," 
and  the  still  greater  aggregate  whole  "all  bipeds,"  and 
that  all  the  former  were  found  among  the  latter.  Now, 
do  we  assert  this  ?  or  would  it  be  true  ?  Assuredly  no 
one  of  us  ever  represented  or  contemplated,  even  with 
his  mind's  eye,  either  of  these  wholes  :  still  less  did  we 
ever  compare  them  as  realities,  and  ascertain  that  the 
fact  is  as  stated.  Neither  could  this  be  done,  by  anything 
short  of  infinite  power :  for  all  men  and  all  bipeds,  ex- 
cept a  comparatively  few,  have  either  ceased  to  exist,  or 
have  not  yet  come  into  existence.  What,  then,  do  we 
mean  by  making  an  assertion  concerning  all  men?  The 
phrase  does  not  mean,  all  and  each  of  a  certain  great  num- 
ber of  objects,  known  or  represented  individually.  It 
means,  all  and  each  of  an  unascertained  and  indefinite 
number,  mostly  hot  known  or  represented  at  all,  but 
which  if  they  came  within  our  opportunities  of  know- 
ledge, might  be  recognised  by  the  possession  of  a  certain 
set  of  attributes,  namely,  those  forming  the  connotation 
of  the  word.  "  All  men,"  and  "  the  class  man,'*  are 
expressions  which  point  to  nothing  but  attributes ;  they 
cannot  be  interpreted  except  in  comprehension.  To  say, 
all  men  are  bipeds,  is  merely  to  say,  given  the  attributes 
of  man,  that  of  being  a  biped  will  be  found  along  with 
them  ;  which  is  the  meaning  in  Comprehension.  If  the 
proposition  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  concept  Man  ex- 
cept, as  to  its  comprehension,  still  less  has  it  with  the 
concept  Biped.  When  I  say.  All  men  are  bipeds,  what 
has  my  assertion  to  do  with  the  clas.s  biped  as  to  its  Ex- 
tension? Have  I  any  concern  with  the  remainder  of 
the  class,  after  Man  is  subtracted  from  it?  Am  I  neces- 
sarily aware  even  whether  there  is  any  remainder  at  all  ? 
I  am  thinking  of  no  such  matter,  but  only  of  the  attri- 
bute two-footed,  and  am  intending  to  predicate  that.  I  am 
thinking  of  it  as  an  attribute  of  man,  but  of  what  else 
it  may  happen  to  be  an  attribute  does  not  concern  me. 
Thus,  all  propositions  into  which  general  names  enter, 
and  consequently  all  reasonings,  are  in  Comprehension 


JUDGMENT.  437 

jonly.  Propositions  and  Reasonings  may  be  written  in 
'Extension,  but  they  are  always  understood  in  Compre- 
hension. The  only  exception  is  in  the  case  of  propositions 
which  have  no  meaning  in  Comprehension,  and  have 
nothing  to  do  with  Concepts — those  of  which  both  the 
subject  and  the  predicate  are  proper  names ;  such  as, 
Tully  is  Cicero,  or,  St.  Peter  is  not  St.  Paul.  These 
words  connote  nothing,  and  the  only  meaning  they  have 
is  the  individual  whom  they  denote.  But  where  a 
meaning  in  Comprehension,  or,  in  other  words,  in  Conno- 
tation, is  possible,  that  is  alwavs  the  one  intended.  And 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  distinction  (though  he  lays  great 
stress  on  it)  between  Reasoning  in  Comprehension  and 
Reasoning  iu  Extension,  will  be  found  (as  we  shall  see 
hereafter)  to  be  a  mere  superfetation  on  Logic. 

It  is  worth  while  to  add,  that  even  could  it  be  admitted 
that  general  propositions  have  a  meaning  in  Extension 
capable  of  being  conceived  as  diiferent  from  their  mean- 
ing in  Comprehension,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  would  still  be 
wrong  in  deeming  that  the  recognition  of  this  meaning 
depends  on,  or  can  possibly  result  from,  a  comparison  of 
the  Concepts.  The  Extension  of  a  concept,  as  I  have 
before  remarked,  is  not,  like  the  Comprehension,  intrinsic 
and  essential  to  the  concept ;  it  is  an  external  and  wholly 
accidental  relation  of  the  concept,  and  no  contemplation 
or  analysis  of  the  concept  itself  will  tell  us  anything 
about  it.  It  is  an  abstract  name  lor  the  aggregate  of 
objects  possessing  the  attributes  included  in  tht;  concept: 
and  whether  that  aggregate  is  greater  or  smaller  does 
not  depend  on  any  properties  of  the  concept,  but  on  the 
boundless  productive  powers  of  .Nature. 


438 


CHAPTER  XIX. 


OF   REASONING. 


In  common  with  the  majority  of  modern  writers  on  Logic, 
whose  language  is  generally  that  of  the  Conceptualist 
school,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  considers  Reasoning,  as  he  con- 
siders Judgment,  to  consist  in  a  comparison  of  Notions  : 
either  of  Concepts  with  one  another,  or  of  Concepts  with 
the  mental  representations  of  individual  objects.  Only, 
in  simple  Judgment,  two  notions  are  compared  imme- 
diately ;  in  Reasoning,  mediately.  Reasoning  is  the 
comparison  of  two  notions  by  means  of  a  third.  As 
thus  :*  "  Reasoning  is  an  act  of  mediate  Comparison  or 
"  Judgment;  for  to  reason  is  to  recognise  that  two 
"  notions  stand  to  each  other  in  the  relation  of  a  whole 
"  and  its  parts,  through  a  recognition  that  those  notions 
"  severally  stand  in  the  same  relation  to  a  third."  The 
foundation,  therefore,  of  all  Reasoning  is  "  the  self-evi- 
"  dentf  principle  that  a  part  of  the  part  is  a  part  of  the 
"  whole."  "  Without!  reasoning  we  should  have  been 
"  limited  to  a  knowledge  of  what  is  given  by  immediate 
"  intuition ;  we  should  have  been  unable  to  draw  any 
"  inference  from  this  knowledge,  and  have  been  shut 
"  out  from  the  discovery  of  that  countless  multitude  of 
"  truths,  which,  though  of  high,  of  paramount  impor- 
"  tance,  are  not  self-evident."  This  recognition  that  we 
discover  a  "  countless  multitude  of  truths,"  composing 
a  vast  proportion  of  all  our  real  knowledge,  by  mere  rea- 
soning, will  be  found  to  jar  considerably  with  our  author's 
theory  of  the  reasoning  process,  and  with  his  whole  view 
of  the  nature  and  junctions  of  Lo2"ic,  the  science  of 
*  Lectures,  iii.  274.  f  Ibid.  p.  271.  J  Ibid.  p.  277. 


REASONING.  439 

Reasoning:  but  this  inconsistency  is  common  to  him 
with  nearly  all  the  writers  ou  Logic,  because,  like  him, 
they  teach  a  theory  of  the  science  too  small  and  narrow 
to  contain  their  own  facts. 

Notwithstanding  the  great  number  of  philosophers 
who  have  considered  the  definition  cited  above  to  be  a 
correct  account  of  Keasoning,  the  objections  to  it  are  so 
manifest,  that  until  after  much  meditation  on  the  sub- 
ject, one  can  scarcely  prevail  on  oneself  to  utter  them : 
so  impossible  does  it  seem  that  difficulties  so  obvious 
should  always  be  passed  over  unnoticed,  unless  they 
admitted  of  an  easy  answer.  Reasoning,  we  are  told,  is 
a  mode  of  ascertaining  that  one  notion  is  a  part  of 
another;  and  the  use  of  reasoning  is  to  enable  us  to 
discover  truths  which  are  not  self-evident.  But  how  is 
it  possible  that  a  truth,  which  consists  in  one  notion 
being  part  of  another,  should  not  be  self-evident?  The 
notions,  by  supposition,  are  both  of  them  in  our  mind. 
To  perceive  what  parts  they  are  composed  of,  nothing 
surely  can  be  necessary  but  to  fix  our  attention  on  them. 
We  cannot  surely  concentrate  our  consciousness  on  two 
ideas  in  our  own  mind,  without  knowing  with  certainty 
whether  one  of  them  as  a  whole  includes  the  other  as  a 
part.  If  we  have  the  notion  biped  and  the  notion  man, 
and  know  what  they  are,  we  must  know  whether  the 
notion  of  a  biped  is  part  of  the  notion  we  form  to  our- 
selves of  a  man.  In  this  case  the  simply  Introspective 
method  is  in  its  place.  We  cannot  need  to  go  beyond 
our  consciousness  of  the  notions  themselves. 

Moreover,  if  it  were  really  the  case  that  we  can  com- 
pare two  notions  and  fail  to  discover  whether  one  ot 
them  is  a  part  of  the  other,  it  is  impossible  to  under- 
stand how  we  could  be  enabled  to  accomplish  this  by 
comparing  each  of  them  with  a  third.  A,  B,  and  C,  are 
three  concepts,  of  which  we  are  supposed  to  know  that 
A  is  a  part  of  B,  and  B  of  C,  but  until  we  put  these  two 
propositions  together  we  do  not  know  that  A  is  a  part  of 
C.  We  have  perceived  B  in  C  intuitively,  by  direct  com- 
parison :  but  what  is  B  ?     By  supposition  it  is,  and  is 


440  RtlASONlNG. 

perceived  to  be,  A  and  somethins^  more.  We  have  tliere- 
tore,  b}^  direct  intuition,  perceived  that  A  and  something- 
more  is  a  part  of  C,  w^ithout  perceiving  that  A  is  a  part 
of  C.  Surely  there  is  here  a  great  psycljological  diffi- 
culty to  be  got  over,  to  which  logicians  of  the  Concep- 
tualist  school  have  been  surprisingly  blind. 

Endeavouring,  not  to  understand  what  they  say,  for 
they  never  face  the  question,  but  to  imagine  what  they 
might  say,  to  relieve  this  apparent  absurdity,  two  things 
occur  to  the  mind.  It  may  be  said,  that  when  a  notion  is 
in  our  consciousness,  but  we  do  not  know  whether  some- 
thing  is  or  is  not  a  part  of  it,  the  reason  is  that  we  have 
forgotten  some  of  its  parts.  We  possess  the  notion,  but 
are  only  conscious  of  part  of  it,  and  it  does  its  work  in 
our  trains  of  thought  only  symbolically.  Or,  again,  it 
ma}^  be  said  that  all  the  parts  of  the  notion  are  in  our 
consciousness,  but  are  in  our  consciousness  indistinctly. 
The  meaning  of  having  a  distinct  notion,  according  to  Sir 
W.  Hamilton,  is  that  we  can  discriminate  the  characters 
or  attributes  of  which  it  is  composed.  The  admitted 
fact,  therefore,  that  we  can  have  indistinct  notions,  may 
be  adduced  as  proof  that  we  can  possess  a  notion,  and 
not  be  able  to  say  positively  what  is  included  in  it. 
These  are  the  best,  or  rather  the  onl}^  presentable  argu- 
ments 1  am  able  to  invent,  in  support  of  the  paradox  in- 
volved in  the  Conceptualist  theory  of  Keasoning. 

It  is  a  great  deal  easier  to  refute  these  arguments 
than  it  was  to  discover  them.  The  refutation,  like  the 
original  difficulty,  is  two  deep.  To  begin ;  a  notion, 
l^art  of  which  has  been  forgotten,  is  to  that  extent  a  lost 
notion,  and  is  as  if  we  had  never  had  it.  The  parts 
which  we  can  no  longer  discern  in  it  are  not  in  it,  and 
cannot  therefore  be  proved  to  be  in  it,  by  reasoning,  any 
more  than  by  intuition.  We  may  be  able  to  discover  by 
reasoning  that  they  ought  to  be  there,  and  may,  in  con^ 
sequence,  put  them  there ;  but  that  is  not  recognising 
them  to  be  there  alread3^  As  a  notion  in  part  forgotten 
is  a  partially  lost  notion,  so  an  indistinct  notion  is  a 
notion  not  yet  formed,  but  in  process  of  formation.     We 


KEASONING.  441 

have  an  Indistinct  notion  of  a  class  when  we  perceive  in 
a  general  way  that  certain  objects  differ  from  others,  but 
do  not  as, yet  perceive  in  what ;  or  perceive  some  of  the 
points  of  difference,  but  have  not  yet  perceived,  or  have 
not  yet  generalized,  the  others.  '  In  this  case  our  notion 
is  not  yet  a  completed  notion,  and  the  parts  which 
we  cannot  discern  in  it,  are  undiscernible  because  they 
are  not  yet  there.  As  in  the  former  case,  the  result 
of  reasoning  may  be  to  put  them  there ;  but  it  cer- 
tain Ij-^  does  not  affect  this  by  proving  them  to  be  there 
already. 

But  even  if  these  explanations  had  solved  the  mystery 
of  our  being  conscious  of  a  whole  and  unable  to  be 
directly  conscious  of  its  part,  they  would  3'et  fail  to  make 
intelligible  how,  not  having  this  knowledge  directly,  we 
are  able  to  acquire  it  through  a  third  notion.  By  hypo- 
thesis we  have  forgotten  that  A  is  a  part  of  C,  until  we 
again  become  aware  of  it  through  the  relation  of  each  of 
them  to  B.  We  therefore  had  not  forgotten  that  A  is 
a  part  of  B,  nor  that  B  is  a  part  of  C  When  we  con- 
ceived B,  we  conceived  A  as  a  part  of  it ;  when  we 
conceived  C,  we  conceived  B  as  a  part  of  it.  In 
the  mere  fact,  therefore,  of  conceiving  C,  we  were  con- 
scious of  B  in  it,  and  consciousness  of  A  is  a  necessary 
part  of  that  consciousness  of  B,  and  yet  our  conscious- 
ness of  C  did  not  enable  us  to  lind  in  it  our  conscious- 
ness of  A,  though  it  was  really  there,  and  though  they 
both  were  distinctly  present.  If  any  one  can  believe 
this,  no  contradiction  and  no  impossibility  in  any  theory 
of  Consciousness  need  stagger  him.  Let  us  now  substi- 
tute for  the  hypothesis  of  forgetfulness,  the  hypothesis 
of  indistinctness.  We  had  a  notion  of  C,  which  was 
so  indistinct  that  we  could  not  discriminate  A  from  the 
other  parts  of  the  notion.  But  it  was  not  too  indis- 
tinct to  enable  us  to  discriminate  B,  otherwise  the 
reasoning  would  break  down  as  well  as  the  intuition. 
The  notion  of  B,  again,  indistinct  as  it  may  have  been  m 
other  respects,  must  have  been  such  that  we  could  with 
assurance  discriminate  A  as  contained  in  it.     Here  then 


442  RKASONING. 

returns  the  same  absurdity :  A  is  distinctly  present  in 
B,  which  is  distinctly  present  in  C,  therefore  A,  if  there 
be  any  force  in  reasoning,  is  distinctly  present  in  C  ;  yet 
A  cannot  be  discriminated  or  perceived  in  the  conscious- 
ness in  which  it  is  distinctly  present :  so  that,  before  our 
reasoning  commenced,  we  were  at  once  distinctly  con- 
scious of  A,  and  entirely  unconscious  of  it.  There  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  reduction  to  absurdity  if  this  is  not 
one. 

The  reason  why  a  judgment  which  is  not  intuitively 
evident,  can  be  arrived  at  through  the  medium  of  pre- 
mises, is  that  judgments  which  are  not  intuitively  evi- 
dent do  not  consist  in  recognising  that  one  notion  is  part 
of  another.  When  that  is  the  case,  the  conclusion  is  as 
well  known  to  us  a6  initio  as  the  premises  ;  which  is  really 
the  case  in  analytical  judgments.  When  reasoning  really 
leads  to  the  "countless  multitudes  of  truths''  not  self- 
evident,  which  our  author  speaks  of — that  is,  when  the 
judgments  are  synthetical — we  learn,  not  that  A  is  part 
of  C,  because  A  is  part  of  B  and  B  of  C,  but  that  A  is 
conjoined  with  C,  because  A  is  conjoined  with  B,  and  B 
with  C.  The  principle  of  the  reasoning  is  not,  a  part  of 
the  part  is  a  part  of  the  whole,  but,  a  mark  of  the  mark  is 
a  mark  of  the  thing  marked,  Nota  nota  est  nota  rei  ipsius. 
It  means,  that  two  things  which  constantly  coexist  with 
the  same  third  thing,  constantly  coexist  with  one  another; 
the  things  meant  not  being  our  concepts,  but  the  facts 
of  experience  on  which  our  concepts  ought  to  be 
grounded. 

This  theory  of  reasoning  is  free  from  the  objections 
which  are  fatal  to  the  Conceptualist  theory.  We  cannot 
discover  that  A  is  a  part  of  C  tlirough  its  being  a  part  of 
B,  since  if  it  really  is  so,  the  one  truth  must  be  as  much 
a  matter  of  direct  consciousness  as  the  other.  But  we  can 
discover  that  A  is  conjoined  with  C  through  its  being 
conjoined  with  B  ;  since  our  knowledge  that  it  is  con- 
joined with  B,  may  have  been  obtained  by  a  series  of 
observations  in  which  C  was  not  perceptible.  C,  we  must 
remember,  stands  for  an  attribute,  that  is,  not  an  actual 


REASONING.  443 

presentation  of  sense,  but  a  power  of  producing  such  pre- 
sentations :  and  that  a  power  may  have  been  present 
without  being  apparent,  is  in  the  common  course  of  things, 
implyingnothing  more  than  that  the  conditions  necessary 
to  determine  it  into  act  were  not  all  present.  This  power 
or  potentiality,  C,  may  in  like  manner  have  been  ascer- 
tained to  be  conjoined  with  B,  by  another  set  ol'  observa- 
tions, in  which  it  was  A's  turn  to  be  dormant,  or  perhaps 
to  be  active,  but  not  attended  to.  By  combining  the 
two  sets  of  observations,  we  are  enabled  to  discover  what 
was  not  contained  in  either  of  them,  namely,  a  constancy 
of  conjunction  between  C  and  A,  such  that  one  of  them 
comes  to  be  a  mark  of  the  other :  though,  in  neither  of 
the  two  sets  of  observations,  nor  in  any  others,  may  C 
and  A  have  been  actually  observed  together ;  or,  if  ob- 
served, not  with  the  frequency,  or  under  the  experimental 
conditions,  which  would  warrant  us  in  generalizing  the 
fact.  This  is  the  process  by  which  we  do,  in  reality, 
acquire  the  greater  part  of  our  knowledge  ;  all  of  it  (as 
our  author  says)  which  is  not  "  given  by  immediate  in- 
tuition." But  no  part  of  this  process  is  at  all  like  the 
operation  of  recognising  parts  and  a  wh(»le ;  or  of  recog- 
nising any  relation  whatever  between  Concepts ;  which 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  matter,  more  than  is  implied 
in  the  fact,  that  we  cannot  reason  about  things  without 
conceiving  them,  or  representing  them  to  the  mind. 

The  theory  which  supposes  Judgment  and  Reasoning 
to  be  the  comparison  of  concepts,  is  obliged  to  make  the 
terra  concept  stand  for,  not  the  thinker's  or  reasoner's 
own  notion  of  a  thing,  but  a  sort  of  normal  notion, 
which  is  understood  as  being  owned  by  everybod)', 
though  everybody  does  not  always  use  it ;  and  it  is  this 
tacit  substitution  of  a  concept  floating  in  the  air  for  the 
very  concept  I  have  in  my  own  mind,  which  makes  it 
possible  to  fancy  that  we  can,  by  reasoning,  tind  out 
something  to  be  in  a  concept,  which  we  are  not  able  to 
discover  in  it  by  consciousness,  because,  in  truth,  thai 
concept  is  not  in  our  consciousness.  But  a  concept  ot  a 
thing,  which  is  not  that  whereby  I  conceive  it,  is  to 


444  REASONING. 

me  as  much  an  external  fact,  as  a  presentation  of  the 
senses  can  be  :  it  is  another  person's  concept,  not  mine. 
It  may  be  the  conventional  concept  of  the  world  at 
large — that  which  it  has  been  tacitly  agreed  to  associate 
with  the  class  ;  in  other  words,  it  may  be  the  connotation 
of  the  class-name ;  and  if  so,  it  may  very  possibly  con- 
tain elements  which  I  cannot  directly  recognise  in  it, 
but  may  have  to  learn  from  external  evidence :  but  this 
is  because  I  do  not  know  the  signification  of  the  word, 
the  attributes  which  determine  its  application — and  what 
I  have  to  do  is  to  learn  them  :  when  1  have  done  this,  I 
shall  have  no  difficulty  in  directly  recognising  as  a  part 
of  them,  anything  which  really  is  so.  But  with  regard 
to  all  attributes  not  included  in  the  signification  of  the 
name,  not  only  I  do  not  find  them  in  the  concept,  but 
they  do  not  even  become  part  of  it  after  I  have  learnt 
them  by  experience ;  unless  we  understand  by  the  con- 
cept, not,  with  philosophers  in  general,  only  the  essence 
of  the  class,  but  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  all  its  known 
attributes.  Even  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  sense,  they  are 
not  found  in  the  concept,  but  added  to  it ;  and  not  until 
we  have  already  assented  to  them  as  objective  facts — 
subsequently,  therefore,  to  the  reasoning  by  which  they 
were  ascertained. 

Take  such  a  case  as  this.  Here  are  two  properties  of 
circles.  One  is,  that  a  circle  is  bounded  by  a  line,  every 
point  of  which  is  equally  distant  from  a  certain  point 
within  the  circle.  This  attribute  is  connoted  by  the 
name,  and  is,  on  both  theories,  a  part  of  the  concept. 
Another  property  of  the  circle  is,  that  the  length  of  its 
circumference  is  to  that  of  its  diameter  in  the  approxi- 
mate ratio  of  3'14159  to  i.  This  attribute  was  dis- 
covered, and  is  now  known,  as  a  result  of  reasoning. 
Now,  is  there  any  sense,  consistent  with  the  meaning  of 
the  terms,  in  which  it  can  be  said  that  this  recondite 
property  formed  part  of  the  concept  circle,  before  it  had 
been  discovered  by  mathematicians  ?  Even  in  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's, meaning  ot  concept,  it  is  in  nobody's  but  a 
mathematician's  concept  even  now :  and  if  we  concede 


REASONING.  445 

that  matbematicians  are  to  determine  the  normal  con-  lU"*^^ 
cept  of  a  circle  for  mankind  at  large,  matliematicians  l^**'**'^* 
themselves  did  not  find  the  ratio  of  the  diameter  to  j"^*^  \ 
the  circumference  in  the  concept,  but  put  it  there  ;  and  I  Vt^^^***^ 
could  not  have  done  so  until  the  long  train  of  diffi-  [*\****^, 
cult  reasoning  which  culminated  in  the  discovery  was  '  «\^*^'' 
complete. 

It  is  impossible,  therefore,  rationally  to  hold  both  the 
opinions  professed  simultaneously  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
— that  reasoning  is  the  comparison  of  two  notions 
through  the  medium  of  a  third,  and  that  Reasoning  is 
a  source  from  which  we  derive  new  truths.  And  the 
truth  of  the  latter  proposition  being  indisputable,  it  is 
the  former  which  must  give  way.  The  theory  of  Rea- 
soning which  attempts  to  unite  them  both,  has  the  same 
defect  which  we  have  shown  to  vitiate  the  corresponding 
theory  of  Judgment :  it  makes  the  process  consist  in 
eliciting  something  out  of  a  concept  which  never  was  in 
the  concept,  and  if  it  ever  finds  its  way  there,  does  so 
after  the  process,  and  as  a  consequence  of  its  having 
taken  place. 


446 


CHAPTER  XX. 


ON  SIR  WILLIAM  HAMILTON  S  CONCKPTION  OF  LOGIC  AS  A 
SCIENCE.  IS  LOGIC  THE  SCIENCE  OF  THE  LAWS,  OR 
FORMS,    OF    THOUGHT? 

Having  discussed  the  nature  of  the  three  psychological 
processes  which,  together,  constitute  the  operations  of  the 
Intellect,  and  having  considered  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory 
of  each,  we  are  in  a  condition  to  examine  the  general 
view  which  he  tal^es  of  the  Science  or  Art,  whose  pur- 
pose it  is  to  direct  our  intellectual  operations  into  their 
proper  course,  and  to  protect  them  against  error. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  defines  Logic  "the  Science  of  the 
Laws  of  Thought  as  Thought."*  He  proceeds  to  justify 
each  of  the  component  parts  of  this  definition.  And  first, 
is  Logic  a  Science  ? 

Archbishop  Whately  says  that  it  is  both  a  Science 
and  an  Art.  He  says  this  is  an  intelligible  sense.  He 
means  that  Logic  both  determines  what  is,  and  prescribes 
what  should  be.  It  investigates  the  nature  of  the  pro- 
cess which  takes  place  in  Reasoning,  and  la^'s  down 
rules  to  enable  that  process  to  be  conducted  as  it  ought. 
For  this  distinction,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  very  severe  on 
Archbishop  Whately.  In  the  Archbishop's  sense  of 
the  words,  he  says,  it  never  has  been,  and  never  could 
have  been,  disputed  that  Logic  is  both  a  Science  and  an 
Art.  Butf  "  the  discrimination  of  art  and  science  is 
"  wrong.  Dr.  Whately  considers  science  to  be  any  know- 
"  ledge  viewed  absolutely,  and  not  in  relation  to  practice, 
"  — a  signification  in  which  every  art  would,  in  its  doc- 

*  Lectures,  iii.  4. 
t  Ibid.  p.  11 ;  see  also  Discussions,  pp.  133, 134. 


IS    LOGIC    AN    ART,    OR    A    SCIENCE?  447 

"  trinal  part,  he  a  science  ;  and  he  defines  art  to  he  the 
"  application  of  knowledge  to  practice,  in  which  sense 
"  Ethics,  Politics,  and  all  practical  sciences,  would  be 
"  arts.  The  distinction  of  arts  and  sciences  is  thus 
"  wrong.  But  ....  were  the  distinction  correct  it  would 
"  be  of  no  value,  for  it  would  distinguish  nothing,  since 
"  art  and  science  would  mark  out  no  real  difference  be- 
"  tween  the  various  branches  of  knowledge,  but  only 
"  different  points  of  view  under  which  the  same  branch 
"  might  be  contemplated  by  us, — each  being  in  different 
"  relations  at  once  a  science  and  an  art.  In  fact.  Dr. 
"  Whately  confuses  the  distinction  of  science  theoretical 
"*  and  science  practical  with  the  distinction  of  science 
"  and  art." 

But  if  the  difference  between  science  and  art  is  not 
the  same  as  that  between  knowledge  theoretical  and 
practical,  we  are  entitled  to  ask,  what  is  it?  If  Arch- 
bishop Whately  has  placed  the  distinction  where  it  is 
not,  does  his  rather  peremptory  critic  and  censor  tell  us 
where  it  is  ?  He  declines  the  problem.  "  I  am  well 
"  aware  that  it  would  be  no  easy  matter  to  give  a  gene- 
"  ral  definition  of  science  as  contradistinguished  from 
"  art,  and  of  art  as  contradistinguished  from  science ; 
"  but  if  the  words  themselves  cannot  validly  be  dis- 
"  criminated,  it  would  be  absurd  to  attempt  to  dis- 
"  criminate  anything  by  them."  In  the  only  other  part 
of  his  Lectures  where  the  distinction  between  Art  and 
Science  is  touched  on,*  he  says  that  the  "apparently  vague 
"  and  capricious  manner  in  which  the  terms  art  and 
"  science  are  applied,"  is  not  "  the  result  of  some  acci- 
"  dental  and  Ibrgotteu  usage,"  but  is  founded  on  a 
"  rational  principle  which  we  are  able  to  trace."  But 
when  the  reader  is  expecting  a  statement  of  this  rational 
principle.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  puts  him  off  with  a  merely 
historical  explanation.  Without  stating  what  the  usage 
actually  is,  he  derives  it  from  a  distinction  drawn  by 
Aristotle  between  "  a  habit  productive,"  and  "  a  habit 
practical,"  which  he  admits  to  be  "  not  perhaps  beyond 

♦  Lectures,  i.  115-119. 


448  IS    LOGIC    THE    SCIENCE    OF 

the  reach  of  criticism  :"  which  he  does  not  undertake 
to  "  vindicate/^  and  which  he  confesses  to  have  been  lost 
sight  of  by  the  moderns  ever  since  they  ceased  to  think 
"  mechanical"  arts  "  beneath  their  notice,"  all  these 
bein^  called  arts  without  any  reference  to  Aristotle^s 
supposed  criterion.*  So  that  Sir.  W.  Hamilton  cannot 
claim  even  accordance  with  usage  for  the  distinction 
which  he  seems,  but  does  not  distinctly  profess,  to 
patronize.  Yet  the  principal  fault  he  finds  with  Arch- 
bishop Whately's  distinction,  is  that  it  does  not  agree 
with  usage.  According  to  it,  he  says,f  "ethics,  politics, 
"  religion,  and  all  other  practical  sciences  would  be 
"  arts  :"  and  he  speaks  of  the  "  incongruity  we  feel  in 
"  talking  of  the  art  of  Ethics,  the  art  of  Religion,  &c  , 
"  though  these  are  eminently  practical  sciences."  J 

Religion  may  be  here  placed  out  of  the  question,  for 
if  there  be  incongruity  with  common  feelings  in  calling 

*  I  give  the  Aristotelian  distinction  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  words  :  "  In 
"  the  Aristotelic  philosophy  the  terms  irpa^is  and  TrpanriKOi.  that  is,  practice 
"  and  practical, — were  employed  both  in  a  generic  or  looser,  and  in  a 
"  special  or  stricter  signification.  In  its  generic  meaning,  npa^is,  practice, 
"  was  opposed  to  theory  or  speculation,  and  it  comprehended  under  it, 
"  practice  in  its  special  meaning,  and  another  co-ordinate  term  to  which. 
"  practice,  in  this  its  stricter  signification,  was  opposed.  This  term  was 
"  noiTfa-is,  which  we  may  inadequately  translate  by  production.  The  dis- 
"  tinction  of  TrpaxTt/coy  and  rroi^riKQ*  consisted  in  this  :  the  former  denoted 
*'  that  action  which  terminated  in  action, — the  latter,  that  action  which 
"  resulted  in  some  permanent  product.  For  example,  dancing  and  music 
"are  practical,  as  leaving  no  work  after  their  performance:  whereas 
"  painting  and  statuary  are  productive,  as  leaving  some  product  over  and 
"  above  their  energy.  Now  Aristotle,  in  formally  defining  art,  defines 
"  it  as  a  habit  productive,  and  not  as  a  habit  practical,  e^is  ttoitjtikt]  fifra 
"  \oyov ;  and  though  he  has  not  always  himself  adhered  strictly  to  this  limi- 
"  tation,  his  definition  was  adopted  by  his  followers,  and  the  term  in  its  ap- 
"  plication  to  the  practical  sciences  (the  term  practical  being  here  used  in 
"  its  genuine  meaning),  came  to  be  exclusively  confined  to  those  whose  end 
"  did  not  result  in  mere  action  or  energy.  Accordingly  as  Ethics,  Politics, 
"  &c.,  proposed  happiness  as  their  end,  and  as  happiness  was  an  energy, 
"  or  at  least  the  concomitant  of  energy,  these  sciences  terminated  in  action, 
"  and  were  consequently  practical,  not  productive.  On  the  other  hand, 
"  Logic,  Rhetoric,  &c  ,  d'd  not  terminate  in  a  mere — an  evanescent  action, 
"  but  in  a  permanent — an  enduring  product  For  the  end  of  Logic  was 
"  the  production  of  a  reasoning,  the  end  of  Rhetoric  the  production  of  an 
"oration,  and  so  forth."  (Lectures,  i.  pp.  117,  ll^.)  The  English  lan- 
guage expresses  the  same  distinction  by  the  two  verbs,  to  do  and  to 
make. 

t  Discussions,  p.  134.  J  Lectures,  i.  116. 


THE  LAWS  OR  FORMS  OF  THOUGHT?       449 

Eeligion  an  art,  there  is  quite  as  much  in  calling  it  a 
science,  and  especially  a  practical  science,  as  if  the 
theoretical  doctrines  of  religion  were  no  part  of  religion. 
If  religion  is  either  a  science  or  an  art,  it  must  be  both, 
and  it  is  commonly  understood  to  consist  preeminently 
in  things  different  from  either,  namely,  a  state  of  the 
feelings,  and  a  disposition  of  the  will.  As  for  Ethics 
and  Politics,  the  one  and  the  other  are,  like  Logic,  both 
sciences  and  arts.  Ethics,  so  far  as  it  consists  of  the 
theory  of  the  moral  sentiments,  and  the  investigation  of 
those  conditions  of  human  vvell-being,  disclosed  by  ex- 
perience, which  the  practical  part  of  Ethics  has  for  its 
object  to  secure,  is,  in  all  senses  of  the  word,  a  science. 
The  rules  or  precepts  of  morals  are  an  art.  If  there  is 
any  reluctance  felt  to  speak  of  an  art  of  morals,  it  is 
not  because  people  prefer  calling  morals  a  science,  but 
because  most  people  are  unwilling  to  look  upon  it  as 
scientific  at  all,  but  prefer  to  regard  it  as  a  matter  of  in- 
stinct, or  of  religious  belief,  or  as  depending  solely 
on  the  state  of  the  will  and  the  affections.  In  the  case 
of  Politics  there  is  not,  even  to  the  vulgarest  apprehen- 
sion, any  incongruity  in  the  use  of  the  word  art :  on  the 
contrary,  "  the  art  of  government"  is  the  vernacular  ex- 
pression, and  "  science  of  government"  a  sort  of  specula- 
tive refinement.  Philosophic  writers  on  politics  have 
generally  preferred  to  call  their  subject  a  science,  in 
order  to  indicate  that  it  is  a  fit  subject  for  speculative 
thinkers,  the  word  art  being  apt  to  suggest  to  modern 
ears  (it  did  not  to  the  ancients)  something  which  is  the 
proper  business  only  of  practitioners.  In  reahty  Politics 
includes  both  a  science  and  an  art.  The  Science  of 
Politics  treats  of  the  laws  of  political  phsenomena  ;  it  is 
the  science  of  human  nature  under  social  conditions. 
The  Art  of  Politics  consists  (or  would  consist  if  it  existed) 
of  rules,  founded  on  the  science,  for  the  right  guidance 
and  government  of  the  affairs  of  society. 

But,  says  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  if  the  difference  between 
Science  and  Art  were  merely  that  between  affirmations 
and  precepts,  the  distinction  would  be  of  no  value,  since 

6  G 


450  IS    LOGIC    THE    SCIENCE    OF 

it   would   "  mark   out   no    real    difference  between   the 
"  various   branches    of  knowledge,    but    only    different 
**  points  of  view  under  which  the  same  branch  miglit 
"  be  contemplated  by  us, — each  being  in  different  rela- 
"  tions  at  once  a  science  and   an  art."     Was  it  from 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  we  should  have  expected  to  hear  that 
a  distinction  is  of  no  value,  because  it  does  not  mark  a 
difference  between  two  things,  but  a  difference  in  the 
points  of  view  in  which  we  may  regard  the  same  thing  ? 
How  often  has  he  told  us,  of  many  of  the  most  imoor- 
tant  distinctions  in  philosophy,  that  they  are  precisely 
of  this  character !     The  remark,  moreover,  in  the  par- 
ticular case,  is  so   extremely  superficial,  that,  coming 
from  an  author  of  whom  it  was  by  no  means  the  habit 
to  look  only  at  the  surface  of  things,  it  is  one   of  the 
strongest  of  the  many  proofs  which  appear  in  his  works, 
how  little  thought  he  had  bestowed  upon  the  sciences 
or  arts,  beyond  his  own  speciality.     The   reason  why 
systems  of  precepts  require  to  be   distinguished  from 
systems  of  truths,  is,  that  an  entirely  different  classifica- 
tion is  required  for  the  purposes  of  theoretical  know- 
ledge, and  for  those  of  its  practical  application.     Take 
the  art  of  navigation,  for  example :  where  is  the  single 
science  corresponding  to  this   art,  or  which  could  with 
any  propriety  be  included  under  the  same  name  with  it? 
Navigation  is  an  art  dependent  on  nearly  the  whole  circle 
of  the  physical  sciences :  on  astronomy,  for  the  marks  by 
which  it  determines  the  ship's  place  on  the  ocean ;  on 
optics,  for  the  construction  and  use  of  its  instruments ; 
on   abstract  mechanics,  to  understand  and  regulate  the 
ship's  movements  ;  on  pneumatics,  for  the  la,ws  of  winds  ; 
on  hydrostatics,  for  the  tides  and  currents,  and  the  waves 
as  influenced  by  winds  ;  on  meteorology,  for  the  weather ; 
on  electricity,  for  thunderstorms ;  on  magnetism,  for  the 
use  of  the  compass;  on  physical  geography,  and  so  on 
nearly  to  the  end  of  the  list.     Not  only  has  each  one  of 
all  these  sciences  furnished  its  contingent  towards  the 
rules  composing  the  one  art  of  navigation,  but  many 
gingle   rules    could    only   have    been    framed    by   the 


THE  LAWS  OR  FORMS  OP  THOUGHT?       451 

union  of  considerations  drawn  from  several  different 
sciences.  For  the  purposes  of  the  art,  the  rules  by 
themselves  are  sufficient,  wherever  it  has  been  found 
practicable  to  make  them  sufficiently  precise.  But 
if  the  learner,  not  content  with  knowing  and  prac- 
tising the  rules,  wishes  to  understand  their  reasons, 
and  so  possess  science  as  well  as  art,  he  finds  no  one 
science  corresponding  in  its  object-matter  with  the 
art ;  he  must  extract  from  many  sciences  those  truths 
of  each  which  have  been  turned  to  practical  account 
for  the  furtherance  of  navigation.  All  this  is  obvious 
to  any  one  (not  to  say  a  person  of  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton's sagacity),  who  has  sufficiently  reflected  on  the 
sciences  and  arts,  to  be  aware  of  the  relation  between 
them.  Archbishop  Whately's  distinction,  therefore,  in 
no  way  merits  the  contemptuous  treatment  which  it 
receives  in  the  Lectures,  and  still  more  in  the  Dis- 
cussions. It  is  eminently  practical,  it  conforms  to 
the  natural  and  logical  order  of  thought,  and  accords 
better  with  the  ends  and  even  with  the  custom  of 
language,  than  any  other  mode  in  which  Arts  can 
be  distinguished  from  Sciences.  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
though  he  condemns  it,  has  not  ventured  to  set  up 
any  competing  distinction  in  its  place,  but  (as  we  have 
seen)  almost  intimates  that  no  satisfactory  one  can  be 
found. 

Next  after  the  question  whether  Logic  is  a  science, 
comes  the  consideration  of  its  object-matter  as  a  science, 
namely,  "  the  Laws  of  Thought  as  Thought."  "  The 
"  consideration  of  this  head,"  says  our  author,*  "  divides 
"itself  into  three  questions — 1.  What  is  Thought? 
"  2.  What  is  Thought  as  Thought  ?  8.  What  are  the 
"  Laws  of  Thought  as  Thought  ?"  These  three  ques- 
tions are  successively  discussed. 

To  the  question,  "  What  is  Thought  ?"  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton answers — It  is  not  the  direct  perception  of  an  object, 
nor  its  representation  in  memory  or  imagination,  nor  its 
mere  suggestion  by  association,  but  is  a  product  of  intel- 

*  Lectures,  iii.  12. 
G  6  2 


452  IS    LOGIC   THE    SCIENCE    OP 

ligence.  Tntellig:ence  acts  only  by  comparison.  "All 
"  thought*  is  a  comparison,  a  recognition  of  similarity  or 
"  difference,  a  conjunction  or  disjunction,  in  other  words 
"  a  synthesis  or  analysis  of  its  objects.  In  Conception, 
"  that  is,  in  the  formation  of  Concepts  (or  general  notions) 
"  it  compares,  disjoins  or  conjoins,  attributes ;  in  an  act 
"  of  Jud2"ment,it  compares,  disjoins  or  conjoins,  concepts; 
"  iri  Eeasoning,  it  compares,  disjoins  or  conjoins,  judg- 
"  ments.  In  each  step  of  this  process  there  is  one  es- 
"  sential  element ;  to  think,  to  compare,  to  conjoin  or 
"disjoin,  it  is  necessary  to  recognise  one  thing  through 
"  or  under  another,  and  therefore,  in  defining  Thought 
"  proper,  we  may  either  define  it  as  an  act  of  Comparison, 
"  or  as  a  recognition  of  one  notion  as  in  or  under  another. 
"  It  is  in  performing  this  act  of  thinking  a  thing  under 
"  a  general  notion,  that  we  are  said  to  understand  or 
"  comprehend  it.  For  example  :  An  object  is  presented, 
"  say  a  book  :  this  object  determines  an  impression,  and 
"  I  am  even  conscious  of  the  impression,  but  without 
"  recognising  to  myself  what  the  thing  is  ;  in  that  case, 
"  there  is  only  a  perception,  and  not  properly  a  thought. 
"  But  suppose  I  do  recognise  it  for  what  it  is,  in  other 
*'  words,  compare  it  with  and  reduce  it  under  a  certain 
"  concept,  class,  or  complement  of  attributes,  which  I  call 
"  book ;  in  that  case,  there  is  more  than  a  perception, — 
"  there  is  a  thought." 

Further  on,  he  againf  defines  an  act  of  thought  as 
"  the  recognition  of  a  thing  as  coming  under  a  concept ; 
*'  in  other  words,  the  marking  an  object  by  an  attribute 
"  or  attributes  previously  known  as  common  to  sundry 
"  objects,  and  to  which  we  have  accordingly  given  a 
"  general  name."  And  subsequently,!  as  "  the  compre- 
hension of  a  thing  under  a  general  notion  or  attribute  ;" 
and  again, §  "  the  cognition  of  any  mental  object  by 
"  another  in  which  it  is  considered  as  included  ;  in  other 
"  words,  thought  is  the  knowledge  of  things  under  concep- 
"  tions."      And   again, ||    "Thought   is   the  Knowledge 

*  Lectures,  iii.  13,  14.  f  Ibid.  p.  15.  +  Ibid.  p.  21. 

§  Ibid.  p.  40.  II  Ibid.  p.  43. 


THE    LAWS    OR    FORMS    OF    THOUGHT?  453 

**  of  a  thing  through  a  concept  or  general  notion,  or  of  one 
"  notion  through  another." 

From  these  different  expressions  we  may  infer,  that 
the  author  confines  the  name  Thought  to  cases  where 
there  is  a  judgment ;  and,  it  would  seem,  a  judgment 
affirming  more  than  mere  existence.  We  think  an  ob- 
ject, or  make  anytliing  an  object  of  thought,  when  we 
are  able  to  predicate  something  of  it ;  to  affirm  that  it 
is  something  in  particular ;  that  it  is  a  certain  sort  of 
thing ;  that  it  belongs  to  a  class — has  something  which 
is  (or  may  be)  common  to  it  with  a  number  of  other 
things  ;  that  it  has,  in  short,  a  certain  attribute,  or  at- 
tributes. This  is  intelligible,  and  unobjectionable  :  but 
our  author's  technical  expressions,  instead  of  facilitating 
the  understanding  of  it,  tend,  on  the  contrary,  very 
much  to  confuse  it.  Like  the  transcendental  metaphysi- 
cians generally.  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  when  he  attempts  to 
state  the  nature  of  a  mental  phsenomenon  with  peculiar 
precision,  does  it  by  a  peculiarly  unprecise  employment 
of  the  common  prepositions.  What  light  is  thrown  upon 
the  simple  process  of  referring  objects  to  a  class,  by 
calling  it  the  recognition  of  one  thing  through,  or  in,  or 
under,  another  ?  What  distinct  signification  is  con- 
veyed by  the  phrases,  "  thinking  a  thing  under  a  general 
notion,"  "  reducing  it  under  a  concept,"  "  knowing  things 
under,  or  through,  conceptions  ?"  To  find  the  meaning 
of  the  explanation  we  have  to  resort  to  the  thing  ex- 
plained. The  only  passage  in  which  the  author  speaks 
distinctly,  is  that  in  which  he  paraphrases  these  expres- 
sions by  the  following :  "  the  marking  an  object  by  an 
"  attribute  or  attributes  previously  known  as  common  to 
"  sundry  objects,  and  to  which  we  have  accordingly  given 
"  a  general  name."  To  think  of  an  object,  then,  is  to 
mark  it  by  an  attribute  or  set  of  attributes,  which  has 
received  a  name,  or  (what  is  much  more  essential)  which 
gives  a  name  to  the  object.  It  gives  to  the  object  the 
concrete  name,  to  wliich  its  own  abstract  name,  if  it  has 
an  abstract  name,  corresponds :  but  it  is  not  indis- 
pensable that  the  attribute  should  have  received  a  name. 


(,  tL.  hAjMjU^  ^  VUix^^-  '• 


454  IS    LOGIC    THE    SCIENCE    OF 

provided  it  gives  one  to  the  object  possessing  it.  An 
animal  is  called  a  bull,  in  sign  of  its  possessing  certain 
attributes,  but  there  does  not  exist  an  abstract  word 
bullness.  Having,  then,  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  language, 
thought  the  object,  by  marking  it  with  a  name  derived 
from  an  attribute,  it  is  perhaps  an  allowable,  though  an 
obscure,  expression,  to  say  that  we  know  the  thing 
through  the  attribute,  or  through  the  notion  of  the 
attribute  :  but  what  is  meant  by  saying  that  we  know 
it,  or  think  it  under  the  attribute  ?  We  know  it  and 
think  it,  simply  as  possessing  the  attribute.  The  other 
phrase,  while  seeming  to  mean  more,  means  less.  Again, 
when  we  are  asserted  to  "  know  one  notion  through 
another ;"  when,  for  example,  we  think,  or  judge,  that 
men,  meaning  all  men,  are  mortal ;  is  this  to  know  the 
notion  Man  through  the  notion  Mortal  ?  The  know- 
ledge we  really  have,  is  that  the  objects  Men  have  the 
attribute  mortality  ;  in  other  words,  that  the  outward 
facts  by  which  we  distinguish  men,  exist  along  with 
subjection  to  the  outward  fact,  death.  If  there  is  a 
recommendation  I  would  inculcate  on  every  one  who 
commences  the  study  of  metaphysics,  it  is,  to  be  always 
sure  what  he  means  by  his  particles.  A  large  portion 
of  all  that  perplexes  and  confuses  metaphysical  thought, 
comes  from  a  vague  use  of  those  small  words. 

After  this  definition  of  Thought,  our  author  proceeds 
to  explain  what  he  means  by  Thought  as  Thought.  He 
means,*  "that  Logic  is  conversant  with  the  form  of 
thought,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  matter."  We  have  here 
arrived  at  one  of  the  cardinal  points  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
philosophy  of  Logic.  However  he  may  vary  on  other 
doctrines,  to  this  he  is  constant,  that  the  province  of 
Logic  is  the  form,  not  the  matter,  of  thought.  It  is  a 
pity  that  the  only  terms  he  can  find  to  denote  the  dis- 
tinction, are  a  pair  of  the  obscurest  and  most  contusing 
expressions  in  the  whole  range  of  metaphysics.  Still 
more  unfortunate  it  is,  that,  thinking  it  necessary  to  em- 
ploy such  terms,  he  has  never,  in  unambiguous  language, 
*  Lectures,  iii.  16. 


THE   LAWS   OR    FORMS    OF   THOUGHT?  455f 

explained  their  meaning.  When  Archbishop  Whately, 
in  somewhat  similar  phraseology,  tells  us  that  Logic  has 
to  do  with  the  form  of  the  reasoning  process,  but  not 
with  its  matter,  we  know  what  he  means.  It  is,  that 
Logic  is  not  concerned  with  the  actual  truth  either  of 
the  conclusion  or  of  the  premises,  but  considers  only 
whether  the  one  follows  from  the  other  ;  whether  the  con- 
clusion must  be  true  if  the  premises  are  true.  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  is  not  content  to  mean  only  this.  He  means 
much  more ;  but  if  we  wish  to  know  what,  the  only 
information  he  here  gives  us  is  a  quotation  from  a  Ger- 
man philosopher,  Esser.  "  We  are  able,  by  abstraction, 
"  to  distinguish  from  each  other, — 1°.  The  object 
"thought  of;  and  2°.  The  kind  and  manner  of  think- 
"  ing  it.  Let  us,  employing  the  old  established  techni- 
"  cal  expressions,  call  the  first  of  these  the  matter,  the 
"  second  the  form,  of  the  thought.  For  example,  when 
"  I  think  that  the  book  before  me  is  a  folio,  the  matter 
"  of  the  thought  is  book  and  folio,  the  form  of  it  is  a 
"judgment."  Thus  far  Esser.  The  Form,  therefore,  of 
Thought,  with  which  alone  Logic  is  conversant,  is  not 
the  object  thought  of,  but  "  the  kind  and  manner  of 
thinking  it."  It  is  not  necessary  to  show  that  this 
explanation  is  insufficient.  But  to  find  any  other,  we 
must  have  recourse,  not  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  but  to  Mr. 
Mansel.  One  of  the  chapters  of  Mr.  Mansel's  "  Prole- 
gomena Logica"  is  entitled  "  On  the  Matter  and  Form 
of  Thought."     It  commences  as  follows  :* — 

"  The  distinction  between  Matter  and  Form  in  com- 
"  mon  language  relatively  to  works  of  Art,  will  serve  to 
"  illustrate  the  character  of  the  corresponding  distinction 
"  in  Thought.  The  term  Matter  is  usually  applied  to 
"  whatever  is  given  to  the  artist,  and  consequently,  as 
"  given,  does  not  come  within  the  province  of  the  art 
"  itself  to  supply.  The  Form  is  that  which  is  given  in 
"  and  through  the  proper  operation  of  the  art.  In 
"Sculpture,  for  example,  the  Matter  is  the  marble  in  its 
"  rough  state  as  given  to  the  sculptor ;  the  Form  is  that 

•  Prolegomena  Logica,  pp.  226,  227r 


456  is    LOGIC   THE    SCIENCE    OF 

"  wliich  the  sculptor  in  the  exercise  of  his  art  communi- 
"  cates  to  it."  Let  rae  here  ask,  had  the  block  of  marble 
no  form  at  all  when  it  came  out  of  the  quarry  ?  "  The 
"  distinction  between  Matter  and  Form  in  any  mental 
"operation  is  analogous  to  this  The  former  includes 
"  all  that  is  given  to,  the  latter  all  that  is  given  hy,  the 
"  operation.  In  the  division  of  notions,  for  example, 
"  whetiier  performed  by  an  act  of  pure  thinking  or  not, 
"  the  generic  notion  is  that  given  to  be  divided ;  the 
"  addition  of  the  difference  in  the  act  of  division  con- 
*'  stitutes  the  species.  And  accordingly,  Genus  is  fre- 
*■  quently  designated  by  logicians  the  material.  Difference 
"the  forynal,  part  of  the  Species."  (An  illustration 
which,  whatever  else  it  rnay  do,  does  not  illustrate.) 
*'  So  likewise  in  any  operation  of  pure  thinking,  the 
**  Matter  will  include  all  that  is  given  to  and  out  of  the 
"  thought ;  the  Form  is  what  is  conveyed  in  and  by  the 
"  thinking  act  itself." 

This  is  a  fair  account  of  the  meaning  of  Matter  and 
Form  in  the  Kantian  philosophy,  and  the  philosophies 
which  descend  genealogically  from  the  Kantian.  But 
this  meaning  must  always  be  taken  with,  and  inter- 
preted by,  the  characteristic  doctrine  of  the  Kantian 
metaphysics,  that  the  mind  does  not  perceive,  but  itself 
creates,  all  the  most  general  attributes  which,  by  a 
natural  illusion,  we  ascribe  to  outward  things ;  which 
attributes,  consequently,  are  called,  by  that  philosophy, 
Forms.  Extension  and  Duration,  for  example,  it  calls 
forms  of  our  sensitive  faculty ;  Substance,  Causality, 
Quantity,  forms  of  our  Understanding,  which  is  our 
faculty  of  thought.  These,  however,  are  not  what  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  and  Mr.  Mansel  mean,  when  they  say  that 
Logic  is  the  science  of  the  forms  of  thought.  They  do 
not  mean  that  it  is  the  science  of  Substance,  Causality, 
and  Quantity.  The  truth  is,  that  as  soon  as  the  word 
Form  is  stretched  beyond  its  proper  signification  of 
bodily  figure,  it  becomes  entirely  vague :  every  thinker 
uses  it  in  a  sense  of  his  own.  The  only  bond  connect- 
ing its   various  meanings,  is  the  negative  one  of  oppo- 


THE  LAWS  OR  FORMS  OF  THOUGHT?       457 

sition  to  Matter.  Whenever  anything  is  called  Form, 
there  is  something  which,  relatively  to  it,  is  regarded 
as  Matter:  and  whenever  anything  is  called  Matter, 
there  is  something  capable  of  being  superinduced  upon 
it,  which  when  superinduced  will  be  styled  its  Form, 
How  completely  the  notion  of  Form  accompanies  that 
of  Matter  as  its  relative  opposite,  we  have  an  illustrious 
example  in  Aristotle,  when  he  defines  the  soul  as  the  Form 
of  the  Body ;  so,  at  least.  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  very  freely, 
translates  evrsXe-^^eia*  It  would  be  quite  warranted  by  the 
practice  of  metaphysicians,  to  call  any  compound  the  form 
of  its  component  elements  ;  water,  for  instance,  the  form 
of  hydrogen  and  oxygen.  And  since  there  is  nothing 
that  may  not  be  regarded  as  matter  relatively  to  some- 
thing which  can  be  constructed  out  of  it,  and  which  is 
form  relatively  to  it,  but  matter  relatively  to  some  other 
thing,  we  have  form  within  form,  like  a  nest  of  boxes. 
Kant  actually  calls  the  conclusion  of  a  syllogism  the 
form  of  it,  the  premises  being  its  matter:  so  that  in 
every  train  of  reasoning,  the  successive  conclusions 
pass  over  one  by  one  from  Form  to  Matter.  Without 
going  this  length.  Sir  W.  Hamilton,!  after  Krug,  con- 
siders the  propositions  and  terms  as  the  matter  of  the 
syllogism,  and  the  mode  in  which  they  are  connected  as 
its  form.  Yet  propositions  and  terms  {i.e.  concepts) 
are  classed  by  him  as  Forms  of  Thought.  Thus  it 
is  impossible  to  draw  any  line  between  the  Matter  of 
Thought  and  its  Form,  or  to  convey  any  distinct  con- 
ception of  the  province  of  a  science  by  saying  that  it  is 
conversant  with  the  one  and  not  with  the  other.  We 
may,  however,  in  a  general  way,  understand  Sir  W.. 
Hamilton  to  mean,  that  Logic  is  not  concerned  with 

*  See  Redd,  p.  202,  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  foot-note.  A  still  odder 
example  is  given  by  Reid  in  his  Essays  on  the  Active  Powers  (Works, 
pp.  649,  650).  "  In  the  scholastic  a^es,  an  action  good  in  itself  was  said 
^'  to  be  materially  good,  and  an  action  done  with  a  right  intention  was 
^'  caiXed  formally  good.  This  last  way  of  expressing  the  distinction  is  still 
^'  familiar  among  theologians." 

t  Lectures,  iil  287,  288.  So  also  Mr.  Mansel,  Prolegomena  Logxca, 
p.  235. 


458  IS    LOGIC   THE    SCIENCE    OF 

the  actual  contents  of  our  knowledge — with  the  parti- 
cular objects,  or  truths,  which  we  know — but  only  with 
our  mode  of  knowing  them :  with  what  the  mind  does 
when  it  knows,  or  thinks,  irrespectively  of  the  particular 
things  which  it  thinks  about :  with  the  theory  of  the  act 
or  fact  of  thinking,  so  far  as  that  fact  is  the  same  in  all 
our  thought,  or  can  be  reduced  to  universal  principles. 
•  But  the  fact  of  thinking  is  a  psychological  phseno- 
menon  ;  and  Logic  is  a  different  thing  from  Psychology. 
It  is  for  the  purpose  of  marking  this  difference  that  iSir 
W.  Hamilton  adds  a  third  point  to  his  definition  of 
Logic,  calling  it  the  science  not  simply  of  Thought  as 
Thought,  but  of  the  Laws  of  Thought  as  Thought.  For 
Psychology  also  treats  of  thought,  considered  merely  as 
thought ;  and  professes  to  give  an  account  of  Thought 
as  a  mental  operation.  In  what,  then,  consists  the  dif- 
ference between  the  two  ?  I  cannot  venture  to  state  it 
in  any  but  our  author's  own  words. ^ 

"  The  phsenomena  of  the  formal,  or  subjective  phases 
"  of  thought,  are  of  two  kinds.  They  are  either  such  as 
"  are  contingent,  that  is,  such  as  may  or  may  not  appear ; 
"  or  they  are  such  as  are  necessary,  that  is,  such  as  cannot 
"  but  appear.  These  two  classes  of  phsenomena  are,  how- 
"  ever,  only  manifested  in  conjunction  ;  they  are  not 
"  discriminated  in  the  actual  operations  of  thought ;  and 
*'  it  requires  a  speculative  analysis  to  separate  them  into 
"  their  several  classes.  In  so  far  as  these  pha^nomena 
"  are  considered  merel3'-  as  phsenomena,  that  is,  in  so  far 
"  as  philosophy  is  merely  observant  of  them  as  manifesta- 
"  tions  in  general,  they  belong  to  the  science  of  Empi- 
"  rical  or  Historical  Psychology.  But  when  philosophy, 
"  by  a  reflective  abstraction,  analyses  the  necessary  from 
"  the  contingent  forms  of  thought,  there  results  a  science, 
**  which  is  distinguished  from  all  others  by  taking  for 
"  its  object-matter  the  former  of  these  classes ;  and  this 
"  science  is  Logic.  Logic,  therefore,  is  at  last  fully  and 
"  finally  defined  as  the  science  of  the  necessary  forms  of 
"  thought." 

•  Lectures,  iii.  24. 


THE  LAWS  OR  FORMS  OF  THOUGHT?       459 

If  language  has  any  meaning,  this  passage  must  be 
understood  to  say,  that  the  "  laws"  or  "  forms"  which 
are  the  province  of  Logic,  are  certain  "  phaenomena"  of 
thought,  distinguished  from  its  other  phaenomena  by 
being  necessarily  present  in  it, — "  such  as  cannot  but 
appear," — while  the  remaining  phsenomena  "  may  or  may 
not  appear."  If  this  be  meant,  we  are  landed  in  a  strange 
conclusion.  There  is  a  science.  Psychology,  which  is  the 
science  of  all  mental  phsenomena,  and  among  others,  of 
the  phsenomena  of  Thought,  and  yet  another  science. 
Logic,  is  required  to  teach  us  its  necessary  phsenomena. 
There  is  a  portion  of  the  properties  of  Thought  whicli 
are-  expressly  excluded  from  the  science  which  treats  of 
Thought,  to  be  reserved  as  the  matter  of  another  science, 
and  these  are  precisely  its  Necessary  qualities.  Those 
which  are  merely  contingent,  "  such  as  may  or  may  not 
appear" — the  properties  which  are  not  common  to  all 
thought,  or  do  not  belong  to  it  at  all  times — these,  it 
seems  to  be  said,  Psychology  knows  something  about : 
but  the  Necessary  properties,  "  such  as  cannot  but  ap- 
pear"— the  properties  which  all  thoughts  possess,  which 
thought  must  possess,  without  the  possession  of  which  it 
would  not  be  thought — these  Psychology  knows  not  of, 
and  it  is  the  office  of  a  different  science  to  investigate 
them.  We  may  next  expect  to  be  told,  that  the  science 
of  dynamics  knows  nothing  of  the  laws  of  motion,  the 
composition  of  forces,  the  theory  of  continuous  and 
accelerating  force,  the  doctrines  of  Momentum  and  Vis 
Viva,  &c. ;  it  only  knows  of  wind  power  and  water  power, 
steam  power  and  animal  power,  and  the  accidents  by 
flood  and  field  which  accompany  them  and  disturb  their 
operation. 

This,  however,  supposes  that  our  author  means  what 
he  expressly  says.  It  assumes  that  by  the  "  Laws  of 
Thought,"  and  the  "  Necessary  Forms  of  Thought,"  he 
means  the  modes  in  >vhich,  and  the  conditions  subject  to 
which,  by  the  constitution  of  our  nature,  we  cannot  but 
think.  But  when  we  turn  over  a  few  pages,  to  the  place 
where  he  is  preparing  to  treat  of  those  laws  or  necessary 


4^0  IS    LOGIC    THE    SCIENCE    OF 

forms  one  by  one,  it  appears  that  this  is  an  entire 
mistake.  Laws  now  no  longer  mean  necessities  of  nature  ; 
they  are  laws  in  a  totallj'-  different  sense  ;  they  mean  pre- 
cepts :  and  the  "  necessary  forms  of  thought"  are  not 
attributes  which  it  must,  but  only  which  it  ought  to 
possess.  "  When*  I  speak  of  laws,  and  of  their  absolute 
necessity  in  relation  to  thought,  you  must  not  suppose 
that  these  laws  and  that  necessity  are  the  same  in 
the  world  of  mind  as  in  the  world  of  matter.  For 
free  intelHgences,  a  law  is  an  ideal  necessity  given  in 
the  form  of  a  precept,  which  we  ought  to  Ibllow,  but 
which  we  may  also  violate  if  we  please  ;  whereas,  for 
the  existences  which  constitute  the  universe  of  nature, 
a  law  is  only  another  name  for  those  causes  which 
operate  blindly  and  universally  in  producing  certain 
inevitable  results.  By  law  of  thought,  or  by  logical  ne- 
cesmiy,  we  do  not,  therefore,  mean  a  physical  law,  such 
as  the  law  of  gravitation,  but  a  general  precept  which  we 
are  able  certainly  to  violate, but  which  if  we  donot  obey, 
our  whole  process  of  thinking  is  suicidal,  or  absolutely 
null.  These  laws  are,  consequentlj^  the  primary  con- 
ditions of  the  possibility  of  valid  thought ;  and  .  .  .  the 
whole  of  Pure  Logic  is  only  an  articulate  development 
of  the  various  modes  in  which  they  are  applied."! 
So  that,  after  all,  the  real  theory  of  Thought — the 
laws,  in  the  scientific  sense  of  the  term,  of  Thought  as 
Thought — do  not  belong  to  Logic,  but  to  Psychology  : 
andJtjs_only  the  validity  of  thought  which  Logic  takes 

*  Lectures,  iii.  78. 
f  It  might  have  been  supposed  that  the  double  meaning  of  the  word  law, 
though  in  the  last  century  it  could  blind  even  a  Montesquieu,  had  been 
sufficiently  written  about  since  that  time,  to  be  understood  by  minds  of 
far  less  calibre  than  Sir  W.  Hamilton's :  yet  in  this  passage  he  does  not 
recognise  it,  but  seems  rather  to  think  that  the  diiference  between  a  law 
in  the  scientific,  and  a  law  in  the  legislative  or  ethical  sense,  does  not  turn 
on  an  ambiguity  of  the  word,  but  on  the  difference  between  "  the  world  of 
mind"  and  "  the  world  of  matter :"  a  "  free  intelligence"  knowing  only 
precepts,  which  it  has  power  to  disobey,  and  not  being  ruled,  like  the  phy- 
sical world,  by  laws  from  which  it  cannot  escape.  Yet  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
is  the  same  philosopher  who  is  for  ever  telling  us  of  necessities  of  thought 
which  are  absolutely  irresistible  to  us — from  which  we  can  by  no  mental 
effort  emancipate  ourselves ;  and  upon  this  alleged  fact  the  larger  half  of 
his  philosophy  is  grounded.    When  we  find  all  this  forgotten,  we  almost 


THE   LAWS    OR   FORMS    OF    THOUGHT?  461 

cognisance  of.  It  is  not  with  Thought  as  Thought,  but 
only  as  Valid  thought,  that  Logic  is  concerned.  There 
iTnothing  to  prevent  us  from  thinking  contrary  to  the 
laws  of  Logic  :  only,  if  we  do,  we  shall  not  think  rightly, 
or  well,  or  conformably  to  the  ends  of  thinking,  but 
falsely,  or  inconsistently^  or  confusedly.  This  doctrine 
is  at  complete  variance  with  the  saying  of  our  author  in 
his  controversy  with  Whately,  that  Logic  is,  and  never 
could  have  been  doubted  to  be,  in  Whately's  sense  of  the 
terms,  both  a  Science  and  an  Art.  For  the  present 
definition  reduces  it  to  the  narrowest  conception  of  an 
Art — that  of  a  mere  system  of  rules.  It  leaves  Science 
to  Psycholog}^,  and  represents  Logic  as  merely  offering 
to  thinkers  a  collection  of  precepts,  which  they  are 
enjoined  to  observe,  not  in  order  that  they  may  think, 
but  that  they  may  think  correctly,  or  validly. 

It  appears  to  me,  however,  that  our  author,  though 
inconsistent  with  himself,  is  much  nearer  the  mark  in 
this  mode  of  regarding  Logic  than  in  the  previous  one. 
I  conceive  it  to  be  true  that  Logic  is  not  the  theory  of 
Thought  as  Thought,  but  of  valid  Thought ;  not  of 
thinking,  but  of  correct  thinking.  It  is  not  a  Science 
distinct  from,  and  coordinate  with.  Psychology.  So  far 
as  it  is  a  science  at  all,  it  is  a  part,  or  branch,  of  Psycho- 
logy ;  difi'ering  from  it,  on  the  one  hand  as  a  part 
ditl'ers  from  the  whole,  and  on  the  other,  as  an  Art 
differs  from  a  Science.  Its  theoretic  grounds  are  wholly 
borrowed  from  Psychology,  and  include  as  much  of  that 

fancy  that  we  liave  opened  a  volume  of  some  other  writer  by  mistake. 
Treating  of  the  same  question  in  another  place,  our  author  remembers  his 
own  philosophy  much  better.  In  the  Lecture  in  which  he  divides  mental 
science  into  the  "  Phaenomenology  of  Mind"  and  its  "Nomology,"  the 
former  a  classification  and  analj'sis  of  our  mental  faculties,  the  latter  an 
investigation  of  their  "laws"  (Lectures,  i.  121,  et  seqq.),  the  word  Laws 
always  stands  for  "  necessary  and  universal  facts,"  "  the  Laws  by  which  our 
faculties  are  governed,"  not  precepts  by  which  they  ought  to  be  governed : 
and  of  these  necessary  and  universal  facts  it  is  expressly  said  that  the  Laws 
of  Thought,  with  which  Logic  is  concerned,  are  a  part.  They  are  classed 
with  "  the  Laws  of  Memory,"  "  the  Laws  of  Association,"  "the  laws  which 
govern  our  capacities  of  enjoyment,"  all  of  which  are  correctly  described 
as  necessary  facts,  and  not  as  precepts.  The  whole  of  this  is  thrown  to  the 
winds  when  the  time  comes  for  taking  up  Logic  as  a  separate  science. 


^  iiiML.    M^^^    vvvuvu^  (^<rri,  nuA^/^ay  , 

462  IS   LOGIC    THE    SCIENCE    OF 

science  as  is  required  to  justify  the  rules  of  the  art. 
Logic  has  no  need  to  know  more  of  the  Science  of 
Thinking,  than  the  difference  between  good  thinking 
and  bad.  A  consequence  of  this  is,  that  the  Ne6essary 
Laws  of  Thought,  those  which  our  author  in  his  first 
doctrine  reserved  especially  to  Logic,  are  precisely  those 
with  which  Logic  has  least  to  do,  and  which  belong  the 
most  exclusively  to  Psychology.  What  is  common  to 
all  thought,  whether  good  or  bad,  and  inseparable  from 
it,  is  irrelevant  to  Logic,  unless  by  the  light  it  may 
indirectly  throw  on  something  besides  itself.  The  pro- 
perties of  Thought  which  concern  Logic,  are  some  of 
,  its  contingent  properties ;  those,  namely,  on  the  pre- 
sence of  which  depends  good  thinking,  as  distinguished 
from  bad. 

1  therefore  accept  our  author's  second  view  of  the 
province  of  Logic,  which  makes  it  a  collection  of  pre- 
cepts or  rules  for  thinking,  grounded  on  a  scientific 
investigation  of  the  requisites  of  valid  thought.  It  is 
this  doctrine  which  governs  his  treatment  of  the  details 
of  Logic,  and  it  is  by  this  that  we  must  interpret  the 
assertion  that  Logic  has  for  its  only  subject  the  Form  of 
Thought.  By  the  Form  of  Thought  we  must  under- 
stand Thinking  itself;  the  whole  work  of  the  Intellect. 
The  Matter  of  Thought  is  the  sensations,  perceptions,  or 
other  presentations  (intuitions,  as  Mr.  Mansel  calls  them), 
in  which  the  intellect  has  no  share  ;  which  are  supplied 
to  it,  independently  of  any  action  of  its  own.  What 
the  mind  adds  to  these,  or  puts  into  them,  is  Forms  of 
/  Thought.  Logic,  therefore,  is  concerned  only  with 
(  Forms,  since,  being  rules  for  thinking,  it  can  have  no 
\  authority  but  over  that  which  depends  on  thought. 
Logic  and  Thinking^  are  coextensive ;  it  is  the  art  of 
Thinking,  of  all  Thinking,  .and  of  nothing  but  Think- 
ing. And  since  every  distinguishable  variety  of  thinking 
act  is  called  a  Form  of  Thought,  the  Forms  of  Thought 
compose  the  whole  province  of  Logic ;  though  it  would 
be  hardly  possible  to  invent  a  worse  phrase  for  expressing 
so  simple  a  fact. 


THE  LAWS  OR  FORMS  OP  THOUGHT?       463 

But  what  are  the  Forms  of  Thought  ?  Kant,  as 
already  observed,  gives  to  that  expression  a  very  wide 
extent.  He  holds  that  every  fundamental  attribute 
which  we  ascribe  to  external  objects  is  a  Form  of 
Thought,  being  created,  not  simply  discerned,  by  our 
thinking  faculty.  Neither  Sir  W.  Hamilton  nor  Mr. 
Mansel  goes  this  length  ;  and  at  all  events  they  do  not 
consider  the  theory  of  the  various  attributes  of  bodies  to 
be  a  part  of  Logic.  It  was  incumbent  on  them,  there- 
fore, to  state  clearly  what  are  the  Forms  of  Thought  with 
which  Logic  is  concerned,  and  for  which  it  supplies 
precepts.  This  question  is  never  put,  in  an  express 
form,  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton :  but  the  answer  which  he 
rather  leaves  to  be  picked  up  than  directly  presents, 
may  be  gathered  from  his  classification  of  our  intellec- 
tual operations.  These  he  reduces  to  three.  Conception, 
Judgment,  and  Reasoning.  He  must  have  recognised, 
therefore,  that  number  of  general  Forms  of  Thought. 
The  Forms  of  Thought  are  Conception,  Judgment,  and 
Reasoning :  Logic  is  the  Science  of  the  Laws  (meaning 
the  rules)  of  these  three  operations.  If,  however,  we 
rigorously  hold  our  author  to  this  short  list,  we  shall 
perpetually  mistake  his  meaning  :  for  (as  already  ob- 
served) the  mode  in  which  the  word  Form  is  used,  allows 
of  form  within  form  to  an  unlimited  extent.  Every 
concept,  judgment,  or  reasoning,  after  having  received 
its  form  from  the  mind,  may  again  be  contemplated  as 
the  Matter  of  some  further  mental  act ;  and  the  product 
of  that  further  act  (according  to  Kant),  or  the  relation  of 
the  product  to  the  matter  (according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
and  Mr.  Mansel),  is  again  a  Form  of  Thought ;  as  we  find, 
to  our  confusion,  when  we  proceed  further,  and  the  more 
profusely,  the  further  we  proceed.  We  have,  first,  how- 
ever, to  consider  a  proposition  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  which 
qualifies  his  definition  of  the  province  of  Logic.  He 
says  :* 

"  Logic  considers  Thought,  not  as  the  operation  of 

•  Lectures,  iii  73. 


T  ' 


464 


IS    LOGIC    THE    SCIENCE    OF 


I"  thinking,  but  as  its  product ;  it  does  not  treat  of  Con- 
"  ception,  Judgment,  and  Eeasoning,  but  of  Concepts, 
"  Judgments,  and  Reasonings." 

Let  me  begin  by  saying  that  I  give  my  entire  adhe- 
sion to  this  distinction,  and  propose  to  reform  the  defi- 
nition of  Logic  accordingly.     It  does  not,  as  we  now  see, 
.    \z  relate  to  the  Laws  of  Thought  as  Thought,  but  to  those 
yjj^     of  the  Products  of  Thought.     Instead  of  the  Laws  of 
?^^^  Conception,  Judgment,  and  Reasoning,  we  must  speak 
.*  U>f  the  Laws  of  Concepts,  Judgments,  and  Reasonings. 

r  vil*'''^  This  would  be  mere  nonsense  in  the  scientific  sense  of 
^  the  word  law  :  for  a  product,  as  such,  can  have  no  laws 
but  those  of  the  operation  which  produces  it.  But  un- 
derstanding by  laws,  as  it  seems  we  are  intended  to  do, 
j  Precepts,  Logic  becomes  the  science  of  the  precepts  for 
the  formation  of  concepts,  judgments,  and  reasonings  :  or 
rather  (a  science  of  precepts  being  an  improper  expres- 
sion) the  science  of  the  conditions  on  which  right  con- 
cepts, judgments,  and  reasonings  depend.  Thus,  Logic 
is  the  Art  of  Thinking,  which  means  of  correct  tliinking, 
and  the  Science  of  the  Conditions  of  correct  thinking. 
This  seems  to  me  a  sufficiently  accurate  definition  of  it. 
But,  in  attempting  a  deeper  metaphysical  analysis  of  the 
distinction  he  has  just  drawn,  our  author  raises  fresh 
difficulties.     He  says  :* 

"  The  form  of  thought  may  be  viewed  on  two  sides, 
"  or  in  two  relations.  It  holds,  as  has  been  said,  a  rela- 
"  tion  both  to  its  subject  and  to  its  object,  and  it  may 
"  accordingly  be  viewed  either  in  the  one  of  these  rela- 
"  tions  or  in  the  other.  In  so  far  as  the  form  of  thought 
"  is  considered  in  reference  to  the  thinking  mind, — to 
"  the  mind  by  which  it  is  exerted, — it  is  considered  as 
"  an  act,  or  operation,  or  energy  ;  and  in  this  relation  it 
"  belongs  to  Phsenomenal  Psychology.  Whereas,  in  so 
"  far  as  this  form  is  considered  in  reference  to  what 
"  thought  is  about,  it  is  considered  as  the  product  of 
**  such  an  act,  and  in  this  relation  it  belongs  to  Logic. 


♦  Lectures,  iii.  73,  74. 


THE  LAWS  OR  FORMS  OF  THOUGHT  ?      465 

"  Thus  Pliaenomenal  Psychology  treats  of  thought  proper 
"  as  conception,  judgment,  reasoning :  Logic,  or  the 
"  Nomology  of  the  Understanding,  treats  of  thought 
"  proper  as  a  concept,  as  a  judgment,  as  a  reasoning." 

Just  when  the  puzzled  reader  fancied  that  he  had  at 
last  arrived  at  something  clear,  comes  an  explanation 
which  throws  all  back  into  darkness.  The  learner  who 
had  been  wandering  in  the  mazes  of  "  Thought  as 
Thougfht,"  laws  which  are  not  laws,  and  "  Forms  of 
Thou^j-ht"  in  which  Form  stands  for  something  which  he 
never  before  heard  of  in  connexion  with  that  word,  at  last 
descried  what  seemed  to  be  firm  ground:  he  was  told 
that  Conception,  Judgment,  and  Keasoning  are  acts  of 
the  mind,  that  Concepts,  Judgments,  and  Reasonings 
are  products  of  those  acts,  and  that  Psychology  is  con- 
versant with  the  former  and  Logic  with  the  latter.  And 
now  it  turns  out  that  the  products  are  the  acts.  The 
two  series  of  things  are  one  and  the  same  series.  They 
are  both  of  them  only  "  Thought  proper."  The  pro- 
duct is  another  word  for  the  act  itself,  considered  in  one 
of  its  aspects — "in  reference  to  what  thought  is  about.'' 
It  is  curious  that  this  should  occur  only  a  few  pages  after 
Whately  has  been  rebuked  for  reducing  a  distinction  to 
inutility,  by  making  it  coincide  with  a  difference  not 
between  things,  but  between  the  aspects  in  which  the 
same  thing  is  regarded. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  therefore  is  of  opinion  that  the 
thinking  act,  though  verbally,  is  not  psychologically 
different  from  the  thought  itself  He  does  not  hold, 
with  Berkeley,  that  an  Idea  is  a  concrete  object  distinct 
from  the  mind,  and  contained  in  it,  like  furniture  in  a 
house;  nor  with  Locke  (if  that  was  Locke's  opinion),  that 
it  is  a  modification  of  the  mind,  but  a  moditication  dis- 
tinct from  the  mind's  act  in  coguising  it;  but  with 
Brown,  that  a  sensation  is  only  myself  feeling,  and  a 
thought  only  myself  thinking.  Concepts,  Judgments, 
and  Reasonings,  are  only  acts  of  conceiving,  judging,  and 
reasoning  ;  acts  of  thought,  considered  not  in  their  rela- 
tion to  the  thinking  mind,  but  to  their  object,  to  "  what 

H    H 


466  IS    LOGIC    THE    SCIENCE   OF 

thought  is  about."*  But  what  is  thought  about  ?  Not 
about  Concepts,  for  all  our  thoughts  are  not  about  the 
thinking  act.  It  must  be  about  the  objective  presenta- 
tion, the  Anschauung,  or  Intuition,  which  the  Concept 
represents,  or  from  which  it  has  been  abstracted.  Ac- 
cording, therefore,  to  the  doctrine  here  distinctly  laid 
down  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  there  are  but  two  things 
present  in  any  of  our  intellectual  operations ;  on  one 
hand,  the  mind  itself  thinking  (that  is,  conceiving, 
judging,  or  reasoning),  and,  on  the  other,  a  mental 
presentation  or  representation  of  the  phsenomenal 
Eeality  which  it  conceives,  or  concerning  which  it 
judges  or  reasons.  I  can  understand  that  the  thinking 
act,  or  in  other  words,  the  mind  in  a  thinking  state, 
may  be  contemplated  in  its  relation  to  the  Keality 
thought  of,  and  may  receive  a  name  which  connotes 
that  Eeality ;  but  how  does  this  entitle  us  to  call  it  a 
product  of  thought  ?  How  can  the  act  of  thought,  or 
the  mind  thinking,  be  looked  upon,  even  hypothetically, 
as  a  product  of  thinking?  How  can  Concepts,  Judg- 
ments, and  Seasonings  be  regarded  as  products  of 
thought,  if  they  are  the  thought  itself  ?  Can  they  be 
both  the  act  and  something  resulting  from  the  act? 
Are  they  results  and  products  of  themselves  ? 

I  conceive  that  there  is  a  way  out  of  this  difficulty : 
a  sense  in  which  the  two  assertions  can  be  reconciled, 
though  it  has  not  been  pointed  out  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 


*  Sir  W.  Hamilton  holds  a  corresponding  theory  in  regard  to  the 
identity  of  an  imagination  with  the  imagining  act.  "  A  representation 
"  considered  as  an  object  is  logically,  not  really,  different  from  a  represen- 
"  tation  considered  as  an  act.  Here  object  and  act  are  merely  the  same  in- 
"  divisible  mode  of  mind  viewed  in  two  different  relations.  Considered  by 
"  reference  to  a  mediate  object  represented,  it  is  a  representative  object : 
"  considered  by  reference  to  the  mind  representing  and  contemplating  the 
"  representation,  it  is  a  representative  act.  A  representative  object  being 
"  viewed  as  posterior  in  the  order  of  nature,  but  not  of  time,  to  the  repre- 
"  sentative  act,  is  viewed  as  &  product;  and  the  representative  act  being 
"  viewed  as  prior  in  the  order  of  nature,  though  not  of  time,  to  the  repre- 
"  sentative  object,  is  viewed  as  a  producing  process."  (Dissertations  on 
Reid,  p.  809.)  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  not  explained  how,  in  the  order  of 
nature,  or  in  any  other  order,  a  thing  can  be  prior,  or  posterior,  or  prior 
and  posterior,  to  itself. 


THE    LAWS    OR    FORMS    OF    TBOTJGHT  ?  467 

and   is  hardly  compatible   with    some  of  his   opinions. 
There  is  a  difference  between  what  can  properly  be  called 
Acts  of  the  mind,   and    the   other  mental  phsenomena 
which  may  be  termed  its  passive  States.     And  I  know 
but  one  way  of  conceiving  the  distinction,  in  which  it  i 
can  possibly  be  upheld,  namely,  by  considering  as  Acts 
only    those    mental   phaenomena   which    are    results    of 
Volition.     Now,  the  first  formation  of  a  Concept,  and 
generally   (though  not   always)   any  fresh  operation  of 
judgment  or  reasoning,  requires  a  mental  effort,  a  con- 
centration of  consciousness  upon  certain  definite  objects, 
which  concentration  depends  on  the  will,  and  is  called 
Attention.     When  this   takes  place,   the  mind  is  pro- 
perly said  to  be  active.     But  after  frequent  repetition  of 
this  act  of  will,  the  associations  to  which  it  has  given  rise 
are  sufficiently  riveted  to  do  their  work  spontaneously;  the 
effort  of  attention,  after  becoming  less  and  less,  is  finally 
null,  and  the  operation,  originally  voluntary,  becomes, 
in   Hartley's   language,    secondarily  automatic.     When 
this  transition  has  been  completed,  what  remains  of  the 
mental  phaenomenon  has  lost  the  character  of  an  Act, 
and  become  numbered  among  passive  States.     It  is  now 
either  a  mere  mental  representation  of  an  object,  differ- 
ing from  those  copied  directly  from  sense,  only  in  having 
certain  of  its  parts  artificially  made  intense  and  promi- 
nent ;  or  it  is  a/«*c?c«/«5of  representations  of  imagination, 
held  together  by  the  tie  of  an  association  artificially  pro- 
duced.    When   the  mental   phaenomenon  has  assumed 
this  passive  character,  it  comes  to  be  termed  a  Concept, 
or,  more  familiarly  and  vaguely,  an  Idea,  and  to  be  felt 
as  if  it  were,  not  the  mind  modified,  but  something  in  the 
mind :  and  in  this  ultimate  phasis  of  its  existence  we  may 
properly  consider  it,  not  as  an  act,  but  as  the  product  of 
a  previous  act ;  since  it  now  takes  place  without  a,ny  con- 
scious activity,  and  becomes  a  subject  on  which  fresh 
activity  may  be  exercised,  by  an  act  of  voluntary  atten- 
tion concentrating  consciousness  on  it,  or  on  some  par- 
ticular part  of  it.     This  explanation,  which  I  leave  for 
the  consideration  of  philosophers,  would  not  have  suited 

fl  H   2 


46S  IS   LOGIC   THE    SCIENCE   OF 

Sir  W.  Hamilton,  since  it  would  have  required  him  to 
limit  the  extent  which  he  habitually  gave  to  the  expres- 
sion "  mental  act."  Every  phsenomenon  of  mind,  down 
to  the  mere  reception  of  a  sensation,  he  regards  as  an 
act :  therein  differing  from  Kant,  and  annihilating  the 
need  and  use  of  the  word,  the  sole  function  of  which  is 
to  distinguish  what  the  mind  originates,  from  what  some- 
thing else  originates  in  the  mind. 

To  return  to  the  definition  of  Logic,  as  the  science  of 
the  Forms  of  Thought,  considered  in  relation,  not  to  the 
thinking  act  itself,  but,  so  far  as  they  are  distinguishable 
from  it,  to  the  products  of  thought.  The  products  of 
thought  are  Concepts,  Judgments,  and  Reasonings,  and 
the  Forms  of  Thought  are  Conception,  Judgment,  and 
IJeasoning.  Logic  is  the  science  of  those  Forms,  so  far  as 
concerns  the  rules  for  the  right  formation  of  the  products: 
or,  as  our  author  elsewhere  phrases  it,  the  science  of  the 
"  formal  conditions"  of  valid  thinking.  These  modes  of 
expression  have  a  rare  power  of  darkening  the  subject, 
but  I  am  endeavouring  to  give  them  an  intelligible  in- 
terpretation, by  means  of  that  which  they  profess  to 
explain.  If,  then,  all  thinking  consists  in  adding,  to 
given  matter,  a  Form  derived  from  the  mind  itself,  what 
shall  we  say  of  the  division,  on  which  so  much  stress  is 
laid,  of  Thinking  itself  into  two  kinds,  Formal  and  Ma- 
terial Thinking,  the  first  of  which  alone  belongs  to  Logic, 
or  at  all  events  to  pure  Logic  ?  Mr.  Mansel  has  written 
a  volume  for  the  express  purpose  of  showing  that  Logic 
is  only  concerned  with  Formal  Thinking  ;  and  Sir  W, 
Hamilton's  division  of  Logic  into  Pure  and  Modified, 
agrees  with  Mr.  Mansel's  distinction.  Yet,  according 
to  the  definition  we  have  just  considered,  all  thinking 
whatever  is  Formal  Thinking  :  since  all  thinking  is  either 
conceiving,  judging,  or  reasoning,  and  these  are  the 
Forms  of  Tliought.  If  Logic  investigates  the  conditions 
requisite  for  the  right  formation  of  concepts,  of  judg- 
ments, and  of  reasonings,  it  investigates  all  the  condi- 
tions of  right  tliought,  lor  there  are  no  other  kinds  of 
thought  than  these ;  and  if  it  does  all  this,  what  is  left 


THE  LAWS  OR  FORMS  OF  THOUGHT?      469 

for  the  so-called  Material  Thinking  which  Logic  is  said 
not  to  be  concerned  with  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question  affords  an  additional  spe- 
cimen of  the  incurable  confusion,  in  which  the  processes 
of  thought  are  involved  by  the  unhappy  misapplication  to 
them  of  the  metaphorical  word  Form.  Though  Concepts, 
Judgments,  and  Eeasonings,  are  said  to  be  the  forms  of 
thought,  and  the  only  forms  which  thought  takes,  or 
rather  gives ;  the  metaphysicians  who  deal  in  Forms  are 
in  the  habit  of  using  phrases  which  signify  that  Con- 
cepts, Judgments,  and  Keasonings,  though  themselves 
Forms,  have  also,  in  themselves,  a  formal  part  and  a 
material.  Different  conpepts,  judgments,  and  reasonings, 
have  different  matter,  according  to  what  it  is  that  the 
conception,  the  judgment,  or  the  reasoning,  is  about: 
and  as  whatever  part  of  anything  is  not  its  Matter,  is 
always  styled  its  Form,  whatever  is  common  to  all  Con- 
cepts, or  whatever  belongs  to  them  irrespectively  of  all 
differences  in  their  matter,  is  said  to  be  their  Form ;  and 
so  of  Judgments  and  of  Eeasonings.  Thus,  the  difference 
between  an  affirmative  and  a  negative  judgment  is  a 
difference  of  form,  because  a  judgment  may  be  either 
affirmative  or  negative  whatever  be  the  matter  to  which 
it  relates.  The  difference  between  a  categorical  and  an 
hypothetical  syllogism  is  a  difference  of  form,  because  it 
neither  depends  on,  nor  is  it  at  all  affected  by,  any  differen- 
ces in  the  matter.  Logic,  according  to  Mr.  Mansel — pure 
Logic,  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton — is  conversant  only 
with  the  Forms  of  Concepts,  Judgments,  and  Reasonings, 
not  with  their  Matter.  Not  only  is  it  concerned  exciu- 
sively  with  tht;  Forms  of  thought,  but  exclusively  with 
the  Forms  of  those  Forms.  And  here  I  fairly  renounce 
any  further  attempt  to  deduce  Sir  VV.  Hamilton's  or  Mr. 
Mansel's  conception  of  Logic  from  their  derinitions  of 
it.  1  collect  it  from  the  general  evidence  of  their  trea- 
tises, and  I  proceed  to  show  why  I  consider  it  to  be 
wrong. 

Logic,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  told  us,  lays  down  the 
Livvs  or  precepts  indispensable  to  Valid  Thought;  the 


470  is  LOGtC  THE  SCIENCE    OP 

coiiditiotis  to  which  thought  is  bound  to  conform,  under 
the  penalty  of  being  invalid,  ineffectual,  not  accom- 
plishing its  end.  And  what  is,  peculiarly  and  emphati- 
cally, the  end  of  Thinking?  Surely  it  is  the  attainment 
of  Truth.  Surely,  if  not  the  sole,  at  all  events  the  first 
and  most  essential  constituent  of  valid  thought,  is  that 
its  results  should  be  true.  Concepts,  Judgments,  and 
Reasonings,  should  agree  with  the  reality  of  things, 
meaning  by  things  the  Phsenomena  or  sensible  presenta- 
tions, to  which  those  mental  products  have  reference. 
A  concept,  to  be  rightly  framed,  must  be  a  concept  of 
something  real,  and  must  agree  with  the  real  fact  which 
it  endeavours  to  represent,  that  is,  the  collection  of  attri- 
butes composing  the  concept  must  really  exist  in  the 
objects  marked  by  the  class-name,  and  in  no  others.  A 
judgment,  to  be  rightly  framed,  must  be  a  true  judg- 
ment, that  is,  the  objects  judged  of  must  really  possess 
the  attributes  predicated  of  them.  A  reasoning,  to  be 
rightly  framed,  must  conduct  to  a  true  conclusion,  since 
the  only  purpose  of  reasoning  is  to  make  known  to  us 
truths  which  we  cannot  learn  by  direct  intuition.  Even 
those  who  take  the  most  limited  view  of  Logic,  allow 
that  the  conclusion  must  be  true  conditionally — provided 
that  the  premises  are  true.  The  most  important,  then, 
and  at  bottom  the  only  important  quality  of  a  thought 
being  its  truth,  the  laws  or  precepts  provided  for  the 
guidance  of  thought  must  surely  have  for  their  principal 
purpose  that  the  products  of  thinking  shall  be  true. 
Yet  with  this,  according  to  Mr.  Mansel,  Logic  has  no 
concern ;  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  reserves  it  for  a  sort  of 
appendix  to  the  science,  under  the  title  of  Modified 
Logic.  Questions  of  truth  and  falsity,  according  to 
both  writers,  regard  only  Material  Thinking,  while 
Formal  Thinking  is  the  province  of  Logic.  The  only 
precepts  for  thinking  with  which  Logic  concerns  itself, 
are  those  which  have  some  other  purpose  than  the  con- 
formity of  our  thoughts  to  the  fact.  Yet  every  possible 
precept  for  thought,  if  it  be  an  honest  one,  must  have 
this  for  at  least  its  ultimate  object.     What,  then,  is  ex- 


THE  LAWS  OR  FORMS  OP  THOUGHT?      471 

eluded  from  Logic,  and  what  is  left  in  it,  by  the  doctrine 
that  it  is  only  concerned  with  Formal  Thinking  ?  What 
is  excluded  is  the  whole  of  the  evidences  of  the  validity 
of  thought.  What  is  included  is  part  of  the  evidence's 
of  its  invalidity. 

In  no  case  can  thinking  be  valid  unless  the  concepts,  *i 
judgments,  and  conclusions  resulting  from  it  are  con- 
formable to  fact.  And  in  no  case  can  we  satisfy  our-  ' 
selves  that  they  are  so,  by  looking  merely  at  the  relations 
of  one  part  of  the  train  of  thought  to  another.  We  must 
ascend  to  the  original  sources,  the  presentations  of  ex- 
perience, and  examine  the  train  of  thought  in  its  relation 
to  these.  But  we  can  sometimes  discover,  without 
ascending  to  the  sources,  that  the  process  of  thought  is 
not  valid  ;  having  been  so  conducted  that  it  cannot  pos- 
sibly avail  for  obtaining  concepts,  judgments,  or  con- 
clusions in  accordance  with  fact.  This,  for  example,  is 
the  case,  if  we  have  allowed  ourselves  to  travel  from  pre- 
mises to  a  conclusion  through  an  ambiguous  term.  The 
process  then  gives  no  ground  at  all  for  believing  the 
conclusion  to  be  true :  it  is  perhaps  true,  but  we  have 
no  more  reason  to  believe  so  than  we  had  before.  Or 
again,  the  concept,  the  judgment,  or  the  reasoning  may 
involve  a  contradiction,  and  so  cannot  possibly  corre- 
spond to  any  real  state  of  facts.  It  is  with  this  part  of 
the  subject  only,  in  the  opinion  of  these  philosophers, 
that  Logic  concerns  itself  According  to  Mr.  Mansel,* 
Logic  "  accepts,  as  logically  valid,  all  such  concepts, 
"  judgments,  and  reasonings,  as  do  not,  directly  or  in- 
"  directly,  imply  contradictions ;  pronouncing  them  thus 
"  far  to  be  legitimate  as  thoughts,  that  they  do  not  in 
"  ultimate  analysis  destroy  themselves  ....  leaving  to 
"  this  or  that  branch  of  material  science  to  determine 
•*  how  far  the  same  products  of  thought  are  guaranteed 
"  by  the  testimony  of  this  or  that  special  experience." 
Mr.  Mansel  has  not  here  conceived  his  own  view  of  the 
subject  with  his  usual  precision.     He  narrows  the  field 

•  Prolegomena  Logica,  p.  265. 


472  IS   LOGIC    THE    SCIENCE   OF 

of  Lopfic  more  than  he  intends.  That  to  which  he  con- 
fines the  name  of  Logic,  accepts  as  valid  all  concepts  and 
judgments  that  do  not  imply  contradictions,  but  by  no 
means  all  reasonings.  It  rejects  these  not  only  when  self- 
contradictory,  but  when  simply  inconclusive.  It  condemns 
a  reasoning  not  only  if  it  draws  a  conclusion  inconsistent 
with  the  premises,  but  if  it  draws  one'whicli  the  premises 
do  not  warrant ;  not  only  if  the  conclusion  must,  but  if  it 
may,  be  false  though  the  premises  be  true.  For  the  notion 
of  true  and  false  wi/l  iorce  its  way  even  into. Formal  Logic, 
whatever  pains  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  Mr.  Mansel  give 
themselves  to  make  the  notions  of  consistent  and  incon- 
sistent, or  of  thinkable  and  unthinkable,  do  dut}^  instead 
of  it.  The  ideas  of  truth  and  falsity  cannot  be  eliminated 
from  reasoning.  We  may  abstract  from  actual  truth, 
but  the  validity  of  reasoning  is  always  a  question  of  con- 
ditional truth — whether  one  proposition  must  be  true  if 
others  are  true^  or  whether  one  proposition  can  be  true  if 
others  are  true.  When  Judgments  or  Reasonings  are  in 
question,  "the  conditions  of  the  thinkable"  are  simply 
the  conditions  of  tjie  believable. 

What  Mr.  Mansel  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  really  mean, 
is  to  segregate  from  the  remainder  of  the  theory  of  the 
investigation  of  truth,  as  much  of  it  as  does  not  require 
any  reference  to  the  original  sufficiency  of  the  ground- 
work of  iactSj  or  the  correctness  of  their  interpretation, 
and  call  this  exclusively  Logic,  or  Pure  Logic.  They 
assume  that  concepts  have  been  formed  and  judgments 
made  somehow ;  and  if  there  is  nothing  within  the  lour 
corners  of  the  concept  or  the  judgment  which  proves  it 
absurd,  that  is,  no  self-contradiction,  they  do  not  ques- 
tion it  further.  Whether  it  is  groundea  on  lact  or  on 
mere  supposition,  and  if  on  iact,  whether  the  fact  is 
represented  correctly,  they  do  nut  ask  ;  but  think  only 
of  the  conditions  necessary  for  preventing  errors  froni 
getting  into  the  process  of  thought,  which  were  not  in 
the  notions  or  the  premises  liom  whence  it  started.  The 
theory  of  these  conditions  (of  which  the  doctrine  of  the 
Syllogism  is  the  principal  part)  Mr.  Mansel  calls  Logic, 


THE  LAWS  OR  FORMS  OF  THOUGHT?       473 

and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  Pure  Logic.  The  expression 
"  Formal  Logic,"  which  is  sometimes  applied  to  it,  is 
perhaps  as  distinctive  and  as  little  misleading  as  any 
other,  and  is  that  which,  for  want  of  a  better,  I  am  con- 
tent to  use.  That  this  part  of  Logic  should  be  distin- 
guished and  named,  and  made  an  object  of  consideration 
separately  from  the  rest,  is  perfectly  natural.  What  I 
protest  against,  is  the  doctrine  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  Mr. 
Mansel,  and  many  other  thinkers,  that  this  part  is  the 
whole ;  that  there  is  no  other  Logic,  or  Pure  Logic,  at 
all ;  that  whatever  is  more  than  this,  belongs  not  to  a 
general  science  and  art  of  Thinking,  but  (in  the  words 
of  Mr.  Mansel)  to  this  or  that  material  science. 

This  doctrine  assumes,  that  with  the  exception  of  the 
rules  of  Formal,  that  is,  of  Syllogistic  Logic,  no  other 
rules  can  be  framed  which  are  applicable  to  thought 
generally,  abstractedly  from  particular  matter  :  That  a 
general  theory  is  possible  respecting  the  relations  which 
the  parts  of  a  process  of  thought  should  bear  to  one 
another,  but  not  respecting  the  proper  relations  of  all 
thought  to  its  matter  :  That  the  problem  which  liacon 
set  before  himself,  and  led  the  way  towards  resolving,  is 
an  impossible  one  :  That  there  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  any 
general  Theory  of  Evidence :  That  when  we  have  takea 
care  that  our  notions  and  propositions  concerning  Things 
shall  be  consistent  with  themselves  and  with  one  another, 
and  have  drawn  no  inferences  from  them  but  such  the 
falsity  of  which  would  be  inconsistent  with  assertions 
already  made,  we  have  done  all  that  a  philosophy  of 
Thought  can  do — and  the  agreement  and  disagreement 
of  our  beliefs  with  the  laws  of  the  thing  itself,  is  in  each 
case  a  special  question,  belonging  to  the  science  of  that 
thing  in  particular :  That  the  study  of  nature,  the  search 
for  objective  truth,  does  not  admit  of  any  rules,  nor  its 
attainment,  of  any  general  test.  For  if  there  are  such 
rules,  if  there  is  such  a  test,  and  the  consideration  of  it 
does  not  belong  to  Logic,  to  what  science  or  study  does 
it  belong  ?  There  is  no  other  science,  which,  irrespec- 
tively of  particular  matter,  professes  to  direct  the  intel- 


474  IS   LOGIC    THE   SCIENCE   OV 

lect  in  the  application  of  its  powers  to  any  matter  on 
which  knowledge  is  possible.  These  philosophers  must 
therefore  think  that  there  can  be  no  such  rules,  or  that  if 
there  are,  they  can  only  be  of  the  vaguest  possible  descrip- 
tion. Sir  W.  Hamilton  says  as  much.  "  If  we*  abstract 
"  from  the  specialities  of  particular  objects  and  sciences, 
"  and  consider  only  the  rules  which  ought  to  govern 
"  our  procedure  in  reference  to  the  object-matter  of  the 
"  sciences  in  general, — and  this  is  all  that  a  universal 
"  Logic  can  propose, — these  rules  are  few  in  number,  and 
"  their  applications  simple  and  evident.  A  material  or 
"  Objective  Logic,  except  in  special  subordination  to  the 
"  circumstances  of  particular  sciences,  is  therefore  of  very 
**  narrow  limits,  and  all  that  it  can  tell  us  is  soon  told." 
It  is  very  true  that  all  Sir  W.  Hamilton  can  tell  us  of  it 
is  soon  told.  Nothing  can  be  more  meagre,  trite,  and 
indefinite  than  the  little  which  he  finds  to  say  respecting 
what  he  calls  Modified  Logic.  And  no  wonder,  when 
we  consider  the  following  extraordinary  deliverance, 
which  I  quote  from  the  conclusion  of  his  Thirtieth  Lec- 
ture on  Logic.  Speaking  of  Physical  Science  generally, 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  thus  expresses  himself"  rf — 

"  In  this  department  of  Knowledge  there  is  chiefly 

*  demanded  a  patient  habit  of  attention  to  details,  in 
'  order  to  detect  phenomena ;  and,  these  discovered,  their 

*  generalization  is  usually  so  easy  that  there  is  little 
'  exercise  attbrded  to  the  higher  energies  of  Judgment 

*  and    Reasoning.      It  was  Bacon's   boast  that  Induc- 

*  tion,  as  applied  to  nature,  would  equalize  all  talents, 

*  level  the  aristocrac}'  of  genius,  accomplish  marvels  by 
'  co-operation  and  method,  and  leave  little  to  be  done  by 
'  the  force  of  individual  intellects.  This  boast  has  been 
'  fulfilled ;  Science  has,  by  the  Inductive  Process,  been 
'  brought  down  to  minds,  who  previously  would  have 

*  been   incompetent   for   its    cultivation,    and   physical 

*  knowledge   now  usefully    occupies    many   who    would 

*  otherwise  have  been  without  any  rational  pursuit." 

*  Lectures,  iv.  232.   (Appendix  I.)  f  Ibid.  p.  138. 


THE  LAWS  OR  FORMS  OF  THOUGHT?      475 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  had  good  reason  for  confining  his 
own  logical  speculations  to  a  minor  and  subordinate 
department  of  the  Science  and  Art  of  Thinking,  when 
he  was  so  destitute  as  this  passa.Lje  proves,  of  the  pre- 
liminary knowledge  required  for  making  any  proficiency 
in  the  other  and  higher  branch.  Every  one  who  has 
obtained  any  knowledge  of  the  physical  sciences  from 
really  scientific  study,  knows  that  the  questions  of  evi- 
dence presented,  and  the  powers  of  abstraction  required, 
in  the  speculations  on  which  their  greater  generalizations 
depend,  are  such  as  to  task  the  very  highest  capacities 
of  the  human  intellect :  and  a  thinker,  however  able, 
who  is  too  little  acquainted  with  the  processes  actually 
followed  in  the  investigation  of  objective  truth,  to  be 
aware  of  this  fact,  is  entitled  to  no  authority  when 
he  denies  the  possibility  of  a  Philosophy  of  Evidence 
and  of  the  Investigation  of  Nature  ;  inasmuch  as  his  own 
acquirements  do  not  furnish  him  with  the  means  of 
judging  whether  it  is  possible  or  not.* 

If  any  general  theory  of  the  sufficiency  of  Evidence 
and  the  legitimacy  of  Generalization  be  possible,  this 
must  be  Logic  kot  t^o^rji/,  and  anything  else  called  by 
the  name  can  only  be  ancillary  to  it.  For  the  Logic 
called  Formal  only  aims  at  removing  one  of  the  obsta- 
cles to  the  attainment  of  truth,  by  preventing  such  mis- 
takes as  render  our  thoughts  inconsistent  with  themselves 
or  with  one  another:  and  it  is  of  no  importance  whether 

*  Accordingly  all  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  to  say  concerning  the  re- 
quisites of  a  legitimate  Induction,  is  that  there  must  be  no  instances  to 
the  contrary,  and  that  the  number  of  observed  instances  must  be  "  com- 
petent." (Lectures,  iv.  1(58,  169.)  If  this  were  all  that  "  a  Material  or 
Objective  Lo^ic"  could  "  tell  us,"  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  treatment  of  it  would 
be  quite  justified.  The  point  of  view  of  a  complete  induction,  namely  one 
in  which  the  nature  of  the  instances  is  such,  that  no  other  result  than  the 
one  arrived  at  is  consistent  with  the  universal  Law  of  Causation,  had  never 
risen  above  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  horizon.  The  same  luw  reach  of  thought, 
not  for  want  of  power,  but  of  the  necessary  knowledge,  shows  itself  in 
every  part  of  the  little  he  says  concerning  the  investigation  of  Nature. 
For  example,  he  impUcitly  follows  the  mistake  of  Kant  in  affirming  an 
intrinsic  difference  between  the  inferences  of  Induction  and  those  of 
Analogy.  Induction,  he  says  (Lectures,  iv.  1(55,  16(5),  infers  that  "  if  a 
"  number  of  objects  of  the  same  class  possess  in  common  a  certain  attribute, 
"...  this  attribute  is  possessed  by  aU  the  objects  of  that  class ;"  while 


476  IS    LOGIC    THE    SCIENCE    OF 

we  think  consistently  or  not,  if  we  think  wrongly.  It 
is  only  as  a  means  to  material  truth,  that  the  formal, 
or  to  speak  more  clearly,  the  conditional,  validity  of  an 
operation  of  thought  is  of  any  value  ;  and  even  that 
value  is  only  negetive :  we  have  not  made  the  smallest 
positive  advance  towards  right  thinking,  hy  merely  keep- 
ing ourselves  consistent  in  what  is,  perhaps,  s^^stematic 
error.  This  by  no  means  implies  that  Formal  Logic, 
even  in  its  narrowest  sense,  is  not  of  very  great,  though 
purely  negative,  value.  On  the  contrar}?-,  I  subscribe 
heartily  to  all  that  is  said  of  its  importance  by  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  and  Mr.  Mansel.  Jt  is  good  to  have  our  path 
clearly  marked  out,  and  a  parapet  put  up  at  all  the  dan- 
gerous points,  whether  the  path  leads  us  to  the  place  we 
desire  to  reach,  or  to  anotlier  place  altogether.  But  to 
call  this  alone  Logic,  or  this  alone  Pure  Logic,  as  if  all 
the  rest  of  the  Philosophy  of  Thought  and  Evidence 
were  merely  an  adaptation  ol  this  to  something  else,  is 
to  ignore  the  end  to  which  all  rules  laid  down  for  our 
thinking  operations  are  meant  to  be  subservient.  The 
purpose  of  them  all,  is  to  enable  us  to  decide  whether  any- 
thing, and  what,  is  proved  true.  Formal  Logic  conduces 
indirectly  to  this  end,  by  enabling  us  to  perceive,  either 
that  the  process  which  has  been  performed  is  one  which 
could  not  possibly  prove  anything,  or  that  it  is  one 
which  will  prove  something  to  be  true,  unless  the  pre- 
mises happen  to  be  false.  This  indirect  aid  is  of  the 
greatest  importance ;  but  it  is  important  because  tiie  end, 

Analogy  infers  tha>t  "  if  .  .  .  two  or  more  things  agree  in  several  internal 
*'  and  es^sential  characters  .  .  .  they  agree,  likewise,  in  all  other  essential 
"  characters,  that  is,  they  are  constituents  of  the  same  class."  A  little 
more  familiarity  with  the  subject  would  have  shown  him  that  the  two  kinds 
of  argument  are  homogeneous,  and  differ  only  in  degree  of  evidence.  The 
type  of  them  both  is,  the  inference  that  things  which  agree  with  one 
another  in  certain  respects,  agree  in  certain  other  respects.  Any  argument 
from  known  points  of  agreement  to  unknown,  is  an  ini'ei'cnce  of  analogy  : 
and  induction  is  no  more.  Induction  concludes  that  if  a  number  of  As 
have  the  attribute  13,  all  things  which  agree  with  them  in  being  As  agree 
with  them  also  in  having  the  attribute  B.  The  only  peculiarity  of  Induc- 
tion, as  compared  with  other  cases  of  analogy,  is,  that  the  known  points  of 
agreement  from  which  further  agreement  is  inferred,  have  been  summed 
up  in  a  single  word  and  made  the  foundation  of  a  class.  For  further  ex- 
planations, see  my  System  of  Logic,  Book  iii.  chap.  xx. 


THE  LAWS  OR  FORMS  OF  THOUGHT?      477 

tlie  ascerfcainrnent  of  truth,  is  important ;  and  it  is  im- 
portant only  as  complementary  to  a  still  more  funda- 
mental part  of  the  operation,  in  which  Formal  Logic 
affords  no  help. 

I  do  not  deny  the  scientific  convenience  of  considering 
this  limited  portion  of  Lo^ic  apart  from  the  rest — the 
doctrine  of  the  Syllogism,  for  instance,  apart  from  the 
theory  of  Induction;  and  of  teaching  it  in  an  earlier 
stage  of  intellectual  education.  It  can  be  taught  earlier, 
since  it  does  not,  like  the  inductive  logic,  presuppose  a 
practical  acquaintance  with  the  processes  of  scientific 
investigation;  and  the  greatest  service  to  be  derived 
from  it,  that  of  keeping  the  mind  clear,  can  be  best 
rendered  before  a  habit  of  confused  thinking  has  been 
acquired.  Not  only,  however,  is  it  indispensable  that 
the  larger  Logic,  which  embraces  all  the  general  condi- 
tions of  the  ascertainment  of  truth,  should  be  studied 
in  addition  to  the  smaller  Logic,  which  only  concerns 
itself  with  the  conditions  of  consistency  ;  but  the  smaller 
Logic  ought  to  be,  at  least  finally,  studied  as  part  of  the 
greater — as  a  portion  of  the  means  to  the  same  end  ; 
and  its  relation  to  the  other  parts — to  the  other  means — 
should  be  distinctly  displayed.  If  thought  be  anything 
more  than  a  sportive  exercise  of  the  mind,  its  purpose  is 
to  enable  us  to  know  what  can  be  known  respecting  the 
facts  of  the  universe  :  its  judgments  and  conclusions 
express,  or  are  intended  to  express,  some  of  those  facts : 
and  the  connexion  which  Formal  Logic,  by  its  analysis 
of  the  reasoning  process,  points  out  between  one  pro- 
position and  another,  exists  only  because  there  is  a  con- 
nexion between  one  objective  truth  and  another,  which 
makes  it  possible  for  us  to  know  objective  truths  which 
have  never  been  observed,  in  virtue  of  others  which 
have.  This  possibility  is  an  eternal  mystery  and  stum- 
bling-block to  Formal  Logic.  The  bare  idea  that  any 
new  truth  can  be  brought  out  of  a  Concept — that  analysis 
can  ever  find  in  it  anything  which  synthesis  has  not 
first  put  in — is  absurd  on  the  face  of  it :  yet  this  is  all 
the  explanation  that   Formal  Logic,  as  viewed  by  Sir 


478  IS    LOGIC   THE    SCIENCE,    ETC. 

W.  Hamilton,  is  able  to  give  of  the  phsenomenon ;  and 
Mr.  Mansel  expressly  limits  the  province  of  Logic  to 
analytic  judgments — to  such  as  are  merely  identical. 
But  what  the  Logic  of  mere  consistency  cannot  do,  the 
Logic  of  the  ascertainment  of  truth,  the  Philosophy  of 
Evidence  in  its  larger  acceptation,  can.  It  can  explain 
the  function  of  the  Katiocinative  process  as  an  instru- 
ment of  the  human  intellect  in  the  discovery  of  truth, 
and  can  place  it  in  its  true  correlation  with  the  other 
instruments.  It  is  therefore  alone  competent  to  furnish 
a  philosophical  theory  of  Reasoning.  Such  partial  ac- 
count as  can  be  given  of  the  process  by  looking  at  it 
solely  by  itself,  however  useful  and  even  necessary  to 
accurate  thought,  does  not  dispense  with,  but  points  out 
in  a  more  empliatic  manner  the  need  of,  the  more  com- 
prehensive Logic  of  which  it  should  form  a  part,  and 
which  alone  can  give  a  meaning  or  a  reason  of  existence 
to  the  Logic  vied  Formal,  or  to  the  reasonin<.r  process 
itself 


479 


CHAPTER  XXI. 


THK    FUNDAMENTAL  LAWS    OF   THOUGHT   ACCORDING  TO 
SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON. 

Having  marked  out,  as  the  sole  province  of  Logic,  the 
"  Laws  of  Thought,"  Sir  W.  Hamilton  naturally  pro- 
ceeds to  specify  what  these  are.  The  "  Fundamental 
Laws  of  Thought,"  of  which  all  other  laws  that  can  be 
laid  down  for  thought  are  but  particular  applications, 
are,  according  to  our  author,  three  in  number :  the  Law 
of  Identity ;  the  Law  of  Contradiction ;  and  the  Law 
of  Excluded  Middle.  In  his  Lectures  he  recognised  a 
fourth,  "the  Law  of  Reason  and  Consequent,"  which 
seems  to  be  compounded  of  the  Law  of  Causation,  and 
the  Leibnitzian  "  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason."  But 
as,  in  his  later  speculations,  he  no  longer  considered  this 
as  an  ultimate  law,  it  needs  not  be  further  spoken  of. 

These  three  laws  he  otherwise  denominates  "  The 
Conditions  of  the  Thinkable  :"*  from  which  it  might 
have  been  supposed  that  he  regarded  them  as  Laws  of 
Thought  in  the  scientific  sense  of  the  word  law ;  condi- 
tions to  which  thought  cannot  hut  conform,  and  apart 
from  which  it  is  impossible.  One  would  have  said,  ^ 
priori,  that  he  could  not  mean  anything  but  this  :  since 
otherwise  the  expression  "  Conditions  of  the  Thinkable" 
is  perverted  from  its  meaning.  Nevertheless,  this  is  not 
what  he  means,  at  least  in  this  place.  It  is  on  this 
very  occasion  that  he  disclaims,  as  applicable  to  laws  of 
thought,  the  scientific  meaning  of  the  term,  and  declares 

*  Lectures,  iii.  79.  In  the  Appendix  to  the  Lectures  (iv.  244,  245)  he 
calls  them  the  Laws  of  the  Thinkable ;  and  the  laws  ot  Conception, 
Judgment,  and  Reasoning  he  distinguislies  from  them  under  the  name  of 
"  the  laws  of  Thinking  in  a  strict  sense." 


I\p ' 


4 so  THE    FUNDAMENTAL    LAWS   OF    THOUGHT 

tliem  to  be  (like  the  laws  inafle  by  Parliament)  s^eneral 
precepts ;  not  necessities  of  the  thinking  act,  but  in- 
structions for  right  thinking.  Yet  it  would  not  have 
been  claiming  too  much  for  these  three  laws,  to  have 
regarded  them  as  laws  in  the  more  peremptory  sense ; 
as  actual  necessities  of  thought.  Our  author  could 
hardly  have  meant  that  we  are  able  to  disbelieve  that  a 
thing  is  itself,  or  to  believe  that  a  thing  is,  and  at  the 
same  time  that  it  is  not.  He  not  only,  like  other  people, 
constantly  assumes  this  to  bean  impossibility,  but  makes 
that  impossibility  the  ground  of  some  of  his  leading 
philosophical  doctrines  ;  as  when  he  says  that  it  is  im- 
possible for  us  to  doubt  the  actual  facts  of  consciousness 
"  because  the  doubt  implies  a  contradiction."*  It  is 
true  that  a  person  may,  in  one  sense,  believe  contra- 
dictory propositions,  that  is,  he  may  believe  the  affirma- 
tive at  some  times  and  the  negative  at  others,  alternately 
forgetting  the  two  beliefs.  It  is  also  true  that  he  may 
yield  a  passive  assent  to  two  forms  of  words,  which,  had 
lie  been  fully  conscious  of  their  meaning,  he  would  have 
known  to  be,  either  wholly  or  in  part,  an  affirmation  and 
a  denial  of  the  same  fact.  But  when  once  he  is  made 
to  see  that  there  is  a  contradiction,  it  is  totally  impossible 
for  him  to  believe  it. 

Now,  to  compel  people  to  see  a  contradiction  where 
a  contradiction  is,  constitutes  the  entire  office  of  Logic  in 
the  limited  sense  in  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  conceives 
it :  and  he  is  quite  right  in  regarding  the  whole  of  Logic, 
in  that  narrow  sense,  as  resting  on  the  three  laws  speci- 
fied by  him.  To  call  them  the  fundamental  laws  of 
"J'hought  is  a  misnomer;  but  they  are  the  laws  of  Con- 
sistency. All  inconsistency  is  a  violation  of  some  one 
of  these  laws  ;  an  unconscious  violation,  for  knowingly 
to  violate  them  is  impossible. 

Something  remains  to  be  said  respecting  the  three 
Laws  considered  singly,  as  well  as  respecting  our  author's 
mode  of  regarding  them. 

The  Law  or  Principle  of  Identity  {Princijnmn  Identi- 

*  Foot-note  to  Eeid,  p.  113,  and  in  many  other  places. 


ACCORDING   TO    SIR  WILLIAM   HAMILTON.  481 

tatis)  is  no  other  than  the  time-honoured  axiom,  "  What- 
ever is,  is,"  or,  in  another  phraseolosry,  "A  thing  is  the 
same  as  itself:"  the  proposition  which  Locke,  in  his 
chapter  on  Maxims,  treated  with  so  much  disrespect. 
Sir  W.  Hamilton,  probably  finding  it  difficult  to  establish 
the  "  principle  of  all  logical  affirmation"  on  such  a  basis 
as  this,  presents  the  axiom*  in  a  modified  shape,  as  an 
assertion  of  the  identity  between  a  whole  and  its  parts ; 
or  rather  between  a  whole  Concept,  and  its  parts  in 
Comprehension — the  attributes  which  compose  it;  for 
Logic,  as  conceived  by  him,  has  nothing  to  do  with  any 
wholes  but  Concepts,  abstracting  altogether  (as  he  as- 
serts) from  the  reality  of  the  things  conceived.f 

Although  our  author  still  so  far  defers  to  the  old 
version  oF  the  Principle  of  Identity,  as  to  say  that  it  is 
*' expressed  in  the  formula  A  is  A,  or  A=A,'*  I  must 
admit  that  while  paying  this  tribute  of  respect  to  our 
ancient  friend,  he  has  taken  a  very  substantial  and 
useful  liberty  with  him,  and  has  made  him  mean  much 
more  than  he  ever  meant  belore.  The  only  fault  that 
can  be  found  (but  that  is  a  serious  one)  is,  that  if  we 
accept  this  view  of  the  maxim,  we  shall  require  many 
*'  principles  of  logical  affirmation"  instead  of  one.  For 
if  we  are  to  make  a  separate  principle  tor  every  mode  in 
which  we  have  occasion  to  re-affirm  the  same  thing  in 
different  words,  we  need  a  large  number  of  them.  If  we 
require  a  special  principle  to  entitle  us,  when  we  have 
affirmed  a  set  of  attributes  jointly,  to  affirm  over  again 

*  Lectures,  iii.  79,  80. 
t  We  here  see  our  author  by  implication  aJmitting  that  a  Concept 
has  no  parts  except  its  parts  in  Comprehension ;  wliat  he  elsewhere  calls 
its  parts  in  Extension  being  in  no  sense  parts  of  the  Concept,  but  parts  of 
something  else,  namely,  of  the  aggregate  of  concrete  objects  to  which  the 
Concept  corresponds.  Had  Sir  VV.  Hamilton  adhered  to  this  rational 
doctrine,  he  must  have  given  up  his  Judgments  in  Extension  :  instead  of 
which  he  not  only  retains  them,  but  considers  them  as  also  founded  on  the 
Principle  of  Identity  :  though  he  has  expressly  limited  that  principle  in  a 
manner  inconsistent  with  founding  any  judgments  on  it  save  Judgments 
in  Comprehension.  This  contradiction  was  worth  pointing  out,  but  is  not 
worth  insisting  on,  since  it  may  be  rectified  by  extending  the  scope  of  the 
First  Law  to  the  identity  of  any  whole  with  its  parts,  instead  of  limiting 
it  to  the  identity  of  a  Concept  with  its  parts  in  Comprehension  only. 

II 


482      THE  FUNDAMENTAL  LAWS  OF  THOUGHT 

the  same  attributes  severally,  we  require  also  a  long  list 
of  such  principles  as  these :  When  one  thing  is  before 
another,  the  other  is  after.  When  one  thing  is  after 
another,  the  other  is  before.  When  one  thing  is  along 
with  another,  the  other  is  along  with  the  first.  When 
one  thing  is  like,  or  unlike,  another,  the  other  is  like 
(or  unlike)  the  first :  in  short,  as  many  fundamental 
principles  as  there  are  kinds  of  relation.  For  we  have 
need  of  all  these  changes  of  expression  in  our  processes 
of  thought  and  reasoning.  What  is  at  the  bottom  of 
them  all  is,  that  Logic  (to  borrow  a  phrase  from  our 
author)  postulates  to  be  allowed  to  assert  the  same  mean- 
ing in  any  words  which  will,  consistently  with  their 
signification,  express  it.  The  use  and  meaning  of  a 
Fundamental  Law  of  Thought  is,  that  it  asserts  in 
.  general  terras  the  ri^ht  to  do  something,  which  the  mind 
needs  to  do  in  cases  as  they  arise.  It  is  in  this  sense 
that  the  Dictum  de  Omni  et  Nullo  is  called  the  funda- 
mental law  of  the  Syllogism.  But,  for  this  purpose, 
it  is  necessary  that  the  Law  or  Postulate  should  be 
stated  in  so  comprehensive  and  universal  a  manner 
as  to  cover  every  case  in  which  the  act  authorized  by  it 
requires  to  be  done.  Looked  at  in  this  light,  the  Prin- 
ciple of  Identity  ought  to  have  been  expressed  thus  : 
(Whatever  is  true  in  one  form  of  word^,  is  true  in  every 
other  form  of  words  which  conveys  the  same  meaning. 
Thus  worded,  it  fulfils  the  requirements  of  a  First  Prin- 
ciple of  Thought ;  for  it  is  the  widest  possible  expres- 
sion of  an  act  of  thought  which  is  always  legitimate,  and 
continually  has  to  be  done.* 

Understood  in  this  sense,  the  Principle  of  Identity 
absorbs  into  itself  a  Postulate  of  Logic  on  which  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  lays  great  stress,  and  which  he  did  good 
service  in  making  prominent,  though  we  shall  hereafter 
find  that  he  sometimes  misapplies  it.     lie  expresses  it 

*  This  principle  provides  for  the  whole  of  what  Kant  terms  Conclusions 
of  Understanding,  and  Dr.  M'Cosh  (p.  290)  Implied  or  Transposed  Judg- 
ments. They  are  not  conclusions,  nor  fresh  acta  of  judgment,  but  the 
original  judgment,  expressed  in  other  words. 


ACCORDING    TO    SIR    WILLIAM   HAMILTON.  483 

as  follows  :*  "  The  only  Postulate  of  Lof^ic  which  re- 
"  quires  an  articulate  enouncement  is  the  demand,  that 
"  before  dealing  with  a  judgment  or  reasoning  expressed 
"  in  language,  the  import  of  its  terms  should  be  fully 
"  understood;  in  other  words,  Logic  postulates  to  be 
"  allowed  to  state  explicitly  in  language,  all  that  is  im- 
"  plicitly  contained  in  the  thought."  There  cannot  be  a 
more  just  demand:  but  let  us  carefully  note  the  terms 
in  which  our  author  enunciates  it,  that  he  may  be  held 
to  them  afterwards.  Everything  may  be  stated  ex- 
plicitly in  language,  which  is  "  implicitly  contained  in 
the  thought,"  that  is  (according  to  his  own  interpreta- 
tion) in  the  "import  of  the  terms"  used.  In  other 
words,  we  have  a  right  to  express  explicitly,  what  has 
already  been  asserted  in  terms  which  really  mean,  though 
they  do  not  explicitly  declare  it.  Observe,  what  has 
been  already  asserted;  not  what  can  be  inferred  from 
something  that  has  been  asserted.  One  proposition  may 
imply  another,  but  unless  the  implication  is  in  the  very 
meaning  of  the  terms,  it  avails  nothing.  It  may  be  im- 
possible that  the  one  proposition  should  be  true  without 
the  other  beinsf  true  also,  and  yet  Logic  cannot  "  postu- 
late" to  be  allowed  to  alfirm  this  last ;  she  must  be  re- 
quired to  prove  it.  Interpreted  in  this,  its  true  sense. 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  postulate  is  legitimate,  but  is  only  a 
particular  case  of  the  Principle  of  Identity  in  its  most 
generalized  shape.  It  is  a  case  of  postulating  to  be 
allowed  to  express  a  given  meaning  in  another  form  of 
words. 

As  already  mentioned.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  reprcsents  the 
Principle  of  Identity  to  be  "  the  principle  of  all  logical 
affirmation."  This  I  can  by  no  means  admit,  whether 
the  Principle  in  question  is  taken  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
narrower,  or  in  my  own  wider  sense.  The  reaffirmation 
in  new  language  of  what  has  already  been  asserted — or 
(descending  to  particulars  and  adopting  our  author's 
phraseology)  the  thinking  of  a  Concept  through  an 
attribute  which  is  a  part  of  itself — can,  as  I  formerly 

*  Lectures,^  iii.  114. 

II  2 


484       THE  FUNDAMENTAL  LAWS  OF  THOUGHT 

observed,  be  admitted  as  a  correct  account  of  the  nature 
of  affirmation,  only  in  the  case  of  Analytical  Judgments. 
In  a  Synthetical  Judgment,  the  attribute  predicated  is 
thought  not  as  part  of,  but  as  existing  in  a  common 
subject  along  with,  the  group  of  attributes  composing  the 
Concept :  and  of  this  operation  of  thought  it  is  plain 
that  no  principle  of  Identity  can  give  any  account,  since 
there  is  a  new  element  introduced,  which  is  not  identical 
with  any  part  of  what  pre-existed  in  thought.  This  is 
clearly  seen  by  Mr.  Mansel,  who  expressly  limits  the 
dominion  of  the  Law  of  Identity  to  analytical  judg- 
ments ;*  and,  with  perfect  consistency,  regards  these  as 
the  only  judgments  with  which  Logic,  as  such,  is  con- 
cerned. If,  then,  the  Law  of  Identity  is  to  be  upheld 
as  the  principle  "  of  all  logical  affirmation,"  we  must 
understand  that  logical  affirmation  does  not  mean  all 
affirmation,  but  only  affirmations  which  communicate  no 
fact,  and  merely  assert  that  what  is  called  by  a  name,  is 
what  the  name  declares  it  to  be. 

If  our  author  had  stated  the  Law  of  Identity  to  be  the 
principle  not  of  "  logical  affirmation,"  but  of  affirmative 
Reasoning,  he  would  have  said  something  far  more  plau- 
sible, and  which  had  been  maintained  b}'  many  of  his 
predecessors.  The  truth  is,  however,  that  as  far  as  that 
law  is  a  principle  of  reasoning  at  all,  it  is  as  much  a 
principle  of  negative,  as  of  affirmative  reasoning.  In 
proving  a  negative,  as  much  as  in  proving  an  affirmative, 
we  require  the  liberty  of  exchanging  a  proposition  for 
any  other  that  is  sequipollent  with  it,  and  of  predicating 
separately  of  any  subject,  all  attributes  which  have  been 
predicated  of  it  jointly.  These  liberties  the  mind  right- 
fully claims  in  all  its  intellectual  operations.  The  prin- 
ciple of  Identity  is  not  the  peculiar  groundwork  of  any 
special  kind  of  thinking,  but  an  indispensable  postulate 
in  all  thinking. 

The  second  of  the  "  Fundamental  Laws"  is  the  Law  or 
Principle  of  Contradiction  {Principium  Confradictionis); 
that  two  assertions,  one  of  which  denies  what  the  other 

*  Prolegomena  Logica,  pp.  196, 197. 


ACCORDING  TO    SIR  WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  485 

i affirms,  cannot  be  thougfht  together.  Most  people  would 
haye  said,  cannot  be  believed  together ;  but  our  author 
resolutely  rel'uses  to  recognise  belief  as  any  element  in 
the  scientific  analysis  of  a  proposition.  "  This  law,"  he 
says,  "  is  the  principle  of  all  logical  negation  and  dis- 
tinction,"* and  "  is  logically  expressed  in  the  formula. 
What  is  contradictory  is  unthinkable. "f  To  this  he 
subjoins,  as  an  equivalent  mathematical  formula,  "A= 
not  A=o,  or  A— A=o:"  a  misapplication  and  perver- 
sion of  algebraical  symbols,  not  to  be  omitted  among 
other  evidences  how  little  familiar  he  was  with  mathe- 
matical modes  of  thought. 

Concerning  the  nanje  of  this  law,  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
observes]:  that  "  as  it  enjoins  the  absence  of  contradiction 
"  as  the  indispensable  condition  of  thought,  it  ought  to 
"  be  called,  not  the  Law  of  Contradiction,  but  the  Law 
"  of  Non-Contradiction,  or  of  non-repugnantiay  It  seems 
that  no  extent  and  accuracy  of  knowledge  concerning 
the  opinions  of  predecessors,  can  preserve  a  thinker  from 
giving  an  erroneous  interpretation  of  their  meaning  by 
antedatinof  a  confusion  ot  ideas  which  exists  in  his  own 
mind.  The  Law  of  Contradiction  does  not  "  enjoin  the 
absence  of  contradiction;"  it  is  not  an  injunction  at  all. 
It  those  who  wrote  before  Sir  W.  Hamilton  of  the  Law 
or  Principle  of  Contradiction,  had  meant  by  those  terms 
what  he  did,  namely,  a  rule  or  precept,  it  would  have 
been,  no  doubt,  absurd  in  them  to  have  given  the  name 
Law  of  Contradiction,  to  a  Precept  of  Non-Contradiction, 
iiut  I  venture  to  assert  that  when  they  spoke  of  the  Law 
of  Contradiction  (which  most  of  them,  I  believe,  never 
did,  but  called  it  the  Principle)  they  were  no  more 
dreaming  of  enjoining  anything,  than  when  they  spoke 
of  the  Law  or  Principle  of  Identity  they  intended  to 
enjoin  identity.  They  used  those  terms  in  their  proper 
scientific,  and  not,  as  Sir  VV.  Hamilton  does,  iu  their 
moral  or  legislative  sense.  %  the  Law  of  Identity  they 
meant  one  of  the  properties  of  identity,  namely,  that  a 
proposition  which  is  identical  must  be  true.  And  by  the 
♦  Lectures,  iii.  82.  f  Ibid.  p.  81.  %  Ibid.  p.  82. 


486      THE  FUNDAMENTAL  LAWS  OF  THOUGHT 

Law  of  Contradiction  they  meant  one  of  the  proper- 
ties of  contradiction,  namely,  that  w^hat  is  contradic- 
tory cannot  be  true.  We  should  express  their  meaning 
better  if  instead  of  the  word  Law,  we  used  the  expres- 
sions, Doctrine  of  Identity,  and  Doctrine  of  Contradiction. 
This  is  what  they  had  in  their  minds,  and  even  expressed 
by  their  words;  for  the  word  Principle,  with  them,  meant 
a  particular  kind  of  Doctrine,  namely,  one  which  is  the 
groundwork,  and  justifying  authority,  of  a  whole  class  of 
operations  of  the  mind.  If  the  word  Law  is  to  be  re- 
tained, Principium  Contradictionis  would  be  better  trans- 
lated, not  Law  of  Contradiction  but  Law  of  Contradictory 
Propositions ;  were  it  not  for  the  consideration,  that  the 
principle  of  Excluded  Middle  is  also  a  law  of  contradictory 
propositions. 

The  Law  of  Contradiction,  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton, is  the  "principle  of  all  logical  negation"*  T  do  not 
see  how  it  can  be  the  principle  of  any  negation  except  the 
denial  that  a  thing  is  the  contradictory  of  itself.  That 
a  sight  is  not  a  taste  is  a  negation,  and  it  must  be  a  very 
narrow  use  of  the  term  which  refuses  it  the  title  of  a 
logical  negation.  But  there  is  no  contradiction  between 
a  sight  and  a  taste.  That  blue  is  not  green,  involves  no 
logical  contradiction.  We  could  believe  that  a  green 
thing  may  be  blue,  as  easily  as  we  believe  that  a  round 
thing  may  be  blue,  if  experience  did  not  teach  us  the 
incompatibility  of  the  former  attributes,  and  the  com- 
patibility of  the  latter.  The  negative  judgment,  that  a 
man  is  not  a  horse,  may  indeed  be  said  to  be  grounded  on 
the  Principle  of  Contradiction,  inasmuch  as  the  opposite 
assertion,  that  a  man  is  a  horse,  is  in  certain  of  its  parts 
contradictory,  though  in  others  only  false.  The  word 
man  may  be  understood  as  signifying  (in  precise  logical 
language,  connoting)  among  the  other  properties,  that  of 
having  exactly  two  legs — the  word  horse,  that  of  having 
four;  and  in  respect  of  this  particular  part  of  the  mean- 
ing of  the  terms,  the  subject  and  the  predicate  are  con- 
tradictory, the  one  affirming  and  the  uther  denying  the 

*  Lectures,  iii.  82. 


ACCORDING    TO    SIR  WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  487 

extra  number  of  le^s.  But  suppose  the  subject  and 
predicate  of  the  judgment  to  be  names  of  classes  con- 
stituted by  positive  attributes  without  negative,  as 
mathematician  and  moralist,  or  merchant  and  philo- 
sopher. An  affirmation  uniting  them  may  then  be  false, 
but  cannot  possibly  be  self- contradictory.  The  Law  of 
Contradiction  cannot  be  the  ground  on  which  it  is 
asserted  that  a  mathematician  is  not  a  moralist,  for  the 
two  Concepts  are  only  different,  not  contradictory,  nor 
even  repugnant. 

Others  have  said,  that  the  Law  or  Doctrine  of  Contra- 
diction is  the  principle  of  Negative  Reasoning.  But 
the  obvious  truth  is,  that  it  is  the  principle  of  all  Rea- 
soning, so  far  as  reasoning  can  be  regarded  apart  from 
objective  truth  or  falsehood.  For,  abstractedly  from  that 
consideration,  the  only  meaning  of  validity  in  reasoning 
is  that  it  neither  involves  a  contradiction,  nor  infers 
anything  the  denial  of  which  would  not  contradict  the 
premises.  Valid  reasoning,  Irom  the  point  of  view 
of  merely  Formal  Logic,  is  a  negative  conception ;  it 
means,  reasoning  which  is  not  self- destructive ;  which 
cannot  be  discovered  to  be  worthless  from  its  own  data. 
It  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that  the  validity  of  the 
reasoning  process  itself,  either  affirmative  or  negative, 
could  be  proved  from  the  Doctrine  of  Contradiction  ;  for 
though  a  given  syllogism  may  be  proved  valid  by  show- 
ing that  the  falsity  of  the  conclusion,  combined  with 
the  truth  of  one  premise,  would  contradict  the  truth  of 
the  other,  this  can  only  be  done  by  another  syllogism, 
so  that  the  validity  of  Reasoning  would  be  taken  for 
granted  in  the  attempt  to  prove  it.  The  Law  of  Con- 
tradiction is  a  principle  of  reasoning  in  the  same  sense, 
and  in  the  same  sense  only,  as  the  Law  of  Identity  is. 
It  is  the  generalization  of  a  mental  act  which  is  of  con- 
tinual occurrence,  and  which  cannot  be  dispensed  with  in 
"reasoning.  As  we  require  the  liberty  of  substituting  for  a 
given  assertion,  the  same  assertion  in  different  words, 
so  we  require  the  liberty  of  substituting,  for  any  asser- 
tion, the  denial  of  its  contradictory.     The  affirmation 


488      THE  FUNDAMENTAL  LAWS  OF  THOUGHT 

of  the  one  and  the  denial  of  the  other  are  logical 
equivalents,  which  it  is  allowable  and  indispensable  to 
make  use  of  as  mutually  convertible. 

The  third  "Fundamental  Law"  is  the  law  or  principle 
of  Excluded  Middle  {jprincipium  Eocchsi  Medii  vel  Tertii), 
of  which  the  purport  is,  that,  of  two  directly  contradic- 
tory propositions,  one  or  the  other  must  be  true.  I 
am  now  expressing  the  axiom  in  my  own  language,  for 
the  tortuous  phraseology*  by  which  our  author  escapes 
from  recognising  the  ideas  of  truth  and  falsity,  having 
already  been  sufficiently  exemplified,  may  here  be  disre- 
garded. This  axiom  is  the  other  half  of  the  doctrine  of 
Contradictory  Propositions.  By  the  law  of  Contradiction, 
contradictory  propositions  cannot  both  be  true  ;  by  the 
law  of  Excluded  Middle,  they  cannot  both  be  false.  Or, 
to  state  the  meaning  in  other  language,  by  the  law  of 
Contradiction  a  proposition  cannot  be  both  true  and  false; 
by  the  law  of  Excluded  Middle  it  must  be  either  true  or 
false — there  is  no  third  possibility. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  says  that  this  law  is  "the  prin- 
ciple of  disjunctive  judgments."!  By  disjunctive  judg- 
ments, logicians  have  always  meant,  judgments  in  this 
form  :  Either  this  is  true  or  that  is  true.  The  law  of 
Excluded  Middle  cannot  be  the  principle  of  any  dis- 
junctive judgment  but  those  in  which  the  subject  of 
both  the  members  is  the  same,  and  one  of  the  predicates 
a  simple  negation  of  the  other :  as,  A  is  either  B  or  not 
B.  That  indeed  rests  on  the  principle  of  Excluded 
Middle,  or  rather,  is  the  very  formula  of"  that  principle. 
It  is  here  to  be  remarked  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  after 
Krug,  but  by  a  very  unaccountable  departure  from  the 
common  usage  of  logicians,  confines  the  name  of  Disjunc- 
tive Judgments  to  those  in  vrhich  all  the  alternative  pro- 
positions have  the  same  subject :  "  D  is  either  B,  or  C, 
or  A."  J  This  is  not  only  an  arbitrary  change  in  the 
meaning  of  words,  but  renders  the  classification  of  pro- 
positions incomplete,  leaving  two  kinds  of  disjunctive 
propositions  (Either  B,  C,  or  D,  is  A,  and  Either  A  is  B 
*  Lectures,  iii.  83.  f  Ibid.  p.  84.  %  Ibid.  p.  239. 


ACCORDING   TO    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  489 

or  C  is  D)  unrecognised  and  without  a  name.  But  even 
in  our  author's  restricted  sense  of  the  word  Disjunctive, 
I  cannot  see  how  the  Law  of  Excluded  Middle  can  be 
said  to  be  the  principle  of  all  disjunctive  judgments. 
The  judgment  that  A  is  either  B  or  not  B,  is  warranted 
and  its  truth  certified  by  the  Law  of  Excluded  Middle  : 
but  the  judgment  that  A  is  either  B  or  C,  both  B  and 
C  being  positive,  requires  some  other  voucher  than  the 
law  that  one  or  other  of  two  contradictories  must  be  true. 
Thus,  "  X  is  either  a  man  or  a  brute,"  is  not  a  judgment 
grounded  on  the  principle  of  Excluded  Middle,  since 
brute  is  not  a  bare  negation  of  man,  but  includes  the 
positive  attribute  of  being  an  animal,  which  X  may 
possibly  not  be. 

It  might  be  said,  with  more  plausibility,  that  the  Law 
of  Excluded  Middle  is  the  principle  of  Disjunctive  Rea- 
soning. Thus,  in  the  last  example,  "  X  is  either  a  man 
or  a  brute"  may  be  a  conclusion  from  two  premises,  that 
X  is  an  animal,  and  that  every  animal  is  either  a  man 
or  a  brute :  the  latter  of  w^hich  is  a  disjunctive  judg- 
ment grounded  on  the  Law  of  Excluded  Middle.  But 
it  is  not  the  fact  that  all  disjunctive  conclusions  are 
inferred  from  premises  of  this  nature.  Having  been 
told  that  A  has  lost  a  son,  I  conclude  that  either  B,  C, 
or  D  (A  having  no  other  sons)  is  dead  :  what  kind  of 
reasoning  is  this  ?  Disjunctive,  surely  :  it  has  a  dis- 
junctive premise,  and  leads  to  a  disjunctive  conclusion. 
But  the  disjunctive  premise  (Every  son  of  A  is  either  B, 
C,  or  D)  does  not  rest  on  the  Law  of  Excluded  Middle, 
or  on  any  necessity  of  thought ;  it  rests  on  my  know- 
ledge of  the  individual  fact. 

The  third  Law,  however,  like  the  two  others,  is  one 
of  the  principles  of  all  reasonings,  being  the  generaliza- 
tion of  a  process  which  is  liable  to  be  required  in  all  of 
them.  As  the  Doctrine  of  Contradiction  authorizes  us 
to  substitute  for  the  assertion  of  either  of  two  contra- 
dictory propositions,  the  denial  of  the  other,  so  the  doc- 
trine of  Excluded  Middle  empowers  us  to  substitute  for 
the  denial   of  either  of  two  contradictory  propositions, 


490        '      THE    FUNDAMENTAL   LAWS    OF   THOUGHT     (VUL. 


X<j(UiXA4y 


the  assertion  of  the  other.  Thus  all  the  three  principles 
which  our  author  terms  the  Fundamental  Laws  of 
Thought,  are  universal  postulates  of  Reasoning  ;  and  as 
such,  are  entitled  to  the  conspicuous  position  which  our 
author  assigns  to  them  in  Logic  :  though  it  is  evident 
that  they  ought  not  to  be  placed  at  the  very  beginning 
of  the  subject,  but  at  the  earliest,  in  its  Second  Part,  the 
theory  of  Judgments,  or  Propositions  :  since  they  essen- 
tially involve  the  ideas  of  Truth  and  Falsity,  which  are 
attributes  only  of  judgments,  not  of  names,  or  Concepts. 
It  is  another  question  altogether,  what  we  ought  to 
think  of  these  three  principles,  considered  not  as  general 
expressions  of  legitimate  intellectual  processes,  but  as 
themselves  speculative  truths.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  con- 
siders them  to  be  such  in  a  very  universal  sense  indeed, 
since  he  thinks  we  are  bound  to  regard  them  as  true 
beyond  the  sphere  of  either  real  or  imaginable  phse- 
nomenal  experience — to  be  true  of  Things  in  Themselves 
— of  JSfoumena.  "  Whatever,"  he  saj^s,*  "  violates  the 
'  laws,  whether  of  Identity,  of  Contradiction,  or  of  Ex- 

*  eluded  Middle,  we  feel  to  be  absolutely  impossible, 
'  not  only  in  thought,  but  in  existence.     Thus  we  cannot 

*  attribute  even  to  Omnipotence  the  power  of  making 
'  a  thing  different  from  itself,  of  making  a  thing  at 
'  once  to  be  and  not  to  be,  of  making  a  thing  neither  to 
'  be  nor  not  to  be.  These  three  laws  thus  determine  to 
'  us  the  sphere  of  possibility  and  of  impossibility :  and 
'  this  not  merely  in  thought  but  in  reality,  not   only 

*  logically  but  metaphysically."     And  in. another  place  :f 

*  If  the  true  character  of  objective  validity  be  univer- 
'  sality,  the  laws  of  Logic  are  really  of  that  character, 

*  for  those  laws  constrain  us,  by  their  own  authority,  to 
'  regard  them  as  the  universal  laws  not  only  of  human 
'  thought,  but  of  universal  reason."     A  few  pages  before, 

our  author  took  pains  to  impress  upon  us  that  we  were 
not  to  regard  these  laws  as  necessities  of  thought,  but 
as  general  precepts  "  which  we  are  able  to  violate :"  but 

*  Lectures,  iii.  98.  f  Ibid.  iv.  65. 


ACCORDING   TO   SIR    WILLIAM   HAMILTON.  491 

they  now  appear  to  be  necessities  of  thought  and  some- 
thing more. 

I  readily  admit  that  these  three  general  propositions 
are  universally  true  of  all  phaenomena.  I  also  admit 
that  if  there  are  any  inherent  necessities  of  thought, 
these  are  such.  I  express  myself  in  this  qualified  man- 
ner, because  whoever  is  aware  how  artificial,  modifiable, 
the  creatures  of  circumstances,  and  alterable  by  circum- 
stances, most  of  the  supposed  necessities  of  thought  are 
(though  real  necessities  to  a  given  person  at  a  given 
time),  will  hesitate  to  affirm  of  any  such  necessities  that 
they  are  an  original  part  of  our  mental  constitution. 
Whether  the  three  so-called  Fundamental  Laws  are  laws 
of  our  thoughts  by  the  native  structure  of  the  mind,  or 
merely  because  we  perceive  them  to  be  universally  true 
of  observed  phaenomena,  I  will  not  positively  decide : 
but  they  are  laws  of  our  thoughts  now,  and  invincibly  ( 
so.  They  may  or  may  not  be  capable  of  alteration  by 
experience,  but  the  conditions  of  our  existence  deny  to 
us  the  experience  which  would  be  required  to  alter  them. 
Any  assertion,  therefore,  which  conflicts  with  one  of  these 
laws — any  proposition,  for  instance,  which  asserts  a  con- 
tradiction, though  it  were  on  a  subject  wholly  removed 
from  the  sphere  of  our  experience,  is  to  us  unbelievable. 
The  belief  in  such  a  proposition  is,  in  the  present  con- 
stitution of  nature,  impossible  as  a  mental  fact.* 

•  "  When  remembering  a  certain  thing  as  in  a  certain  place,  the  place 
"  and  the  thing  are  mentally  represented  together ;  while  to  think  of  the 
"  non-existence  of  the  thing  in  that  place,  implies  a  consciousness  in  which 
"the  place  is  represented  but  not  the  thing.  Similarly,  if  instead  of 
"  thinking  of  an  object  as  colourless,  we  think  of  it  as  having  colour,  the 
"  change  consists  in  the  addition  to  the  concept  of  an  element  that  was 
"  before  absent  from  it — the  object  cannot  be  thought  of  first  as  red  and 
"then  as  not  red,  without  one  component  of  the  thought  being  totally 
*'  expelled  from  the  mind  by  another.  The  law  of  the  Excluded  Middle, 
"  then,  is  simply  a  generalization  of  the  universal  experience  that  some 
"  mental  states  are  directly  destructive  of  other  states.  It  formulates  a 
"  certain  absolutely  constant  law,  that  the  appearance  of  any  positive 
"  mode  of  consciousness  cannot  occur  without  excluding  a  correlative 
"  negative  mode  :  and  that  the  negative  mode  cannot  occur  without  ei- 
"  eluding  the  correlative  positive  mode :  the  antithesis  of  positive  and 
"  negative  being,  indeed,  merely  an  expression  of  this  experience.  Hence 
"  it  follows  that  if  consciousness  is  not  in  one  of  the  two  modes,  it  must 
"be  in  the  other." — Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  in  Fortnightly  Review  for  July 
15,  1865. 


492      THE  FUNDAMENTAL  LAWS  OF  THOUGHT 

But  Sir  W,  Hamilton  g-oes  beyond  this  :  he  thinks 
that  the  obstacle  to  belief  does  not  lie  solely  in  an 
incapacity  of  our  believing  faculty,  but  in  objective  in- 
capacities of  existence ;  that  the  "  Fundamental  Laws 
of  Thought"  are  laws  of  existence  too,  and  may  be 
known  to  be  true  not  only  of  Phsenomena  but  also  of 
Nouraena.  Of  this,  however,  as  of  all  else  relating  to 
Noumena,  the  verdict  of  philosophy,  I  apprehend,  must 
be  that  we  are  entirely  ignorant.  The  distinction  itself 
is  but  an  idle  one ;  for  since  Noumena,  if  they  exist,  are 
wholly  unknowable  by  us,  except  pha3nomenally,  through 
their  effects  on  us  ;  and  since  all  attributes  which  exist 
for  us,  even  in  our  fancy,  are  but  phajnomena,  there  is 
nothing  for  us  either  to  affirm  or  deny  of  a  Noumenon 
except  phsenomenal  attributes  :  existence  itself,  as  we 
conceive  it,  being  merely  the  power  of  producing  phse- 
nomena. Now  in  respect  to  phsenomenal  attributes,  no 
one  denies  the  three  "  Fundamental  Laws"  to  be  uni- 
versall}'-  true.  Since  then  they  are  laws  of  all  Phse- 
nomena, and  since  Existence  has  to  us  no  meaning  but 
one  which  has  relation  to  Phsenomena,  we  are  quite  safe 
in  looking  upon  them  as  laws  of  Existence.  This  is 
sufficient  lor  those  who  hold  the  doctrine  of  the  Rela- 
tivity of  human  knowledge.  But  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  as 
has  been  seen,  does  not  hold  that  doctrine,  though  he 
holds  a  verbal  truism  which  he  chooses  to  call  by  the 
same  name.  His  opinion  is  that  we  do  know  something 
more  than  phsenomena :  that  we  know  the  Primary 
Qualities  of  bodies  as  existing  in  the  Noumena,  in  the 
things  themselves,  and  not  as  mere  powers  of  affecting 
us.  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  therefore,  needs  another  kind  of 
argument  to  establish  the  doctrine  that  the  Laws  of 
Identity,  Contradiction,  and  Excluded  Middle,  are  laws 
of  all  existence  :  and  here  we  leave  it  :* 

"  To  deny  the  universal  application  of  the  three  laws 

"  is,  in  fact,  to  subvert  the  reality  of  thought ;  and  as  this 

"  subversion  is  itself  an  act  of  thought,  it  in  fact  annihi- 

"  lates  itself.     When,  for  example,  I  say  that  A  is,  and 

*  Lectures,  iii.  99, 100. 


ACCORDING  TO    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  493 

"  then  say  that  A  is  not,  by  the  second  assertion  I  sub- 
"  late  or  take  away  what,  by  the  first  assertion,  I  posited 
"  or  laid  down ;  thought,  in  the  one  case,  undoing  by 
"  negation  what,  in  the  other,  it  had  by  affirmation 
"  done."  This  proves  only  that  a  contradiction  is  un- 
thinkable, not  that  it  is  impossible  in  point  of  fact. 
But  what  follows  goes  more  directly  to  the  mark.  "  But 
"  when  it  is  asserted  that  A  existing  and  A  non-existing 
"  are  at  once  true,  what  does  it  imply  ?  It  implies  that 
"  negation  and  affirmation  correspond  to  nothing  out  of 
"  the  mind, — that  there  is  no  agreement,  no  disagree- 
"  raent  between  thought  and  its  objects ;  and  this  is 
"  tantamount  to  saying  that  truth  and  falsehood  are 
"  merely  empty  sounds.  For  if  we  only  think  by  affirma- 
"  tion  and  negation,  and  if  these  are  only  as  they  are 
"  exclusive  of  each  other,  it  follows  that  unless  existence 
"  and  non-existence  be  opposed  objectively  in  the  same 
"  manner  as  affirmation  and  negation  are  opposed  sub- 
**  jectively,  all  our  thought  is  a  mere  illusion.  Thus 
"  it  is  that  those  who  would  assert  the  possibility  of 
"  contradictions  being  at  once  true,  in  fact  annihilate 
"  the  possibility  of  truth  itself,  and  the  whole  significance 
"  of  thought." 

Of  this  favourite  style  of  argument  with  our  author 
we  have  already  had  many  specimens,  and  have  said  so 
much  about  them,  that  we  can  afibrd  to  be  brief  in  the 
present  instance.  Assuming  it  to  be  true  that  "  to  deny 
the  universal  application  of  the  three  laws"  as  laws  of 
existence  "  is  to  subvert  the  reality  of  thought :"  is 
anything  added  to  the  force  of  this  consideration  by 
saying  that  "this  subversion  is  itself  an  act  of  thought  ?" 
If  the  reality  of  thought  can  be  subverted,  is  there  any 
peculiar  enormity  in  doing  it  by  means  of  thought  itself? 
In  what  other  way  can  we  imagine  it  to  be  done  ?  And 
if  it  were  true  that  thought  is  an  invalid  process,  what 
better  proof  of  this  could  be  given  than  that  we  could, 
by  thinking,  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  our  thoughts 
are  not  to  be  trusted  ?  Sir  W.  Hamilton  always  seems 
to  suppose  that  the  imaginary  sceptic,  who  doubts  the 


494      THE  FUNDAMENTAL  LAWS  OF  THOUGHT 

validity  of  thought  altogether,  is  obliged  to  claim  a 
greater  validity  for  his  subversive  thoughts  than  he 
allows  to  the  thoughts  they  subvert.  But  it  is  enough 
for  him  to  claim  the  same  validity,  so  that  all  opinions 
are  thrown  into  equal  uncertainty.*  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  of 
all  men,  ought  to  know  this,  fur  when  he  is  himself  on 
the  sceptical  side  of  any  question,  as  when  speaking  of 
the  Absolute,  or  anything  else  which  he  deems  inacces- 
sible to  the  human  faculties,  this  is  the  very  line  of 
argument  he  employs.  He  proves  the  invalidity,  as 
regards  those  subjects,  of  the  thinking  process,  by  show- 
ing that  it  lands  us  in  contradictions.! 

But  it  is  entirely  inadmissible  that  to  suppose  that  a 
law  of  thought  need  not  necessarily  be  a  law  of  existence, 
invalidates  the  thinking  process.  If,  indeed,  there  were 
any  law  necessitating  us  to  think  a  relation  between 
phcBnomena  which  does  not  in  fact  exist  between  the 
phsenomena,  then  certainly  the  thinking  process  would 

*  The  principal  extant  interpreter  of  the  ancient  Scepticism,  Sextus 
Empiricus,  expressly  defines  as  its  essence  and  scope,  to  -navri  Xdyw  Xoyoi/ 
Xuov  dvTiKeladai.  (Pyrrh.  Hypot.)  It  is,  indeed,  impossible  to  conceive 
Scepticism  otherwise.  Anything  more  would  not  be  Scepticism,  but 
Negative  Dogmatism. 

•f  "  If  I,"  says  our  author  (Appendix  to  Lectures,  i.  402),  "  have  done 
"  anything  meritorious  in  philosophy,  it  is  in  the  attempt  to  explain  the 
"  phaenomena  of  these  contradictions,  in  showing  that  they  arise  only 
"  when  intelligence  transcends  the  limits  to  which  its  legitimate  exercise 
"  is  restricted.'  "  In  generating  its  antinomies,  Kant's  Reason  transcended 
*•  its  limits,  violated  its  laws.  .  .  .  Ecason  is  only  self-contradictory  when 
"  driven  beyond  its  legitimate  bounds."  (Appendix  to  Lectures,  ii.  54.3.) 
"  It  is  only  when  transcending  that  sphere,  when  founding  on  its  illegiti- 
"mate  as  on  its  legitimate  exercise,  that  it  affords  a  contradictory 
"  result.  .  .  .  The  dogmatic  assertion  of  necessity — of  Fatalism,  and  the 
"  dogmatic  assertion  of  Liberty,  are  the  counter  and  equally  inconceivable 
"  conclusions  from  reliance  on  the  illegitimate  and  one-sided."  (Appendix 
to  Lectures,  i.  403.)  To  the  same  effect  Mr.  Mansel,  throughout  his 
"  Limits  of  Religious  Thought." 

In  one  of  the  Appendices  to  the  Lectures  on  Metaphysics  (ii.  527,  628), 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  makes  out  a  long  list  of  contradictions  or  antinomies  (of 
which  we  shall  have  something  to  say  hereafter)  involved,  as  he  thinks,  in 
the  attempt  to  conceive  the  Infinite,  and  which  he  considers  as  evidence 
that  the  notion  is  beyond  the  reach  of  the  human  faculties.  Tet  he  will 
not  allow  that  the  fact  of  leading  to  contradictions,  which  he  habitually 
urges  as  an  argument  against  the  validity  of  some  thought,  would  be  ad- 
missible as  an  argument  against  Thought  in  general,  if  it  could  be  brought 
home  to  it.  At  least  he  will  not  allow  it  in  this  place  :  for  in  his  theory 
of  the  veracity  of  Consciousness  he  does  (Lectures,  i.  277). 


ACCORDING   TO    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.  495 

be  proved  invalid,  because  we  should  be  compelled  by  it 
to  think  true  something  which  would  really  be  false. 
But  if  the  mind  is  incapable  of  thinking  anything  re- 
specting Noumena  except  the  Phaenomena  which  it  con- 
siders as  proceeding  from  them,  and  to  which  it  can 
appeal  to  test  its  thoughts ;  and  if  we  are  under  no 
necessity  of  thinking  these  otherwise  than  in  conformity 
to  what  they  really  are  ;  we  may  refuse  to  believe  that 
our  generalizations  from  the  Phsenomenal  attributes  of 
Noumena  can  be  applied  to  Noumena  in  any  other 
aspect,  without  in  the  least  invalidating  the  operation  of 
thought  in  regard  to  anything  to  which  thought  is  ap- 
plicable. We  may  say  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton  what  he  says 
himself  in  another  case:*  "I  only  say  that  thought  is 
"  limited  ;  but,  within  its  limits,  1  do  not  deny,  I  do  not 
'*  subvert,  its  trutli."  As  he  elsewhere  observes,  trans- 
lating from  Esser,t  truth  consists  "  solely  in  the  cor- 
respondence of  our  thoughts  with  their  objects."  If  the 
only  real  object  of  thought,  even  when  we  are  nominally 
speaking  of  Noumena,  are  Phaenomena,  our  thoughts 
are  true  when  they  are  made  to  correspond  with  Phae- 
nomena :  and,  the  possibility  of  this  being  denied  by  no 
one,  the  thinking  process  is  valid  whether  our  laws  of 
thought  are  laws  of  absolute  existence  or  not. 

•  Lectures,  iii.  100.  f  Ibid.  p.  107;  see  also  iv.  61. 


^ 


496 


CHAPTEE  XXII. 


OF    SIR  WILLIAM    HAMILTON'S    SUPPOSED   IMPROVEMENTS    IN 
FORMAL   LOGIC. 

Of  all  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  pliilosophical  achievements, 
there  is  none,  except  perhaps  his  "  Philosophy  of  the 
Conditioned,"  on  account  of  which  so  much  merit  has 
been  claimed  for  him,  as  the  additions  and  corrections 
which  he  is  supposed  to  have  contributed  to  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Syllogism,  These  may  be  summed  up  in 
two  principal  theories,  with  their  numerous  corollaries 
and  applications  ;  the  recognition  of  two  kinds  of  Syllo- 
gism, Syllogisms  in  Extension  and  Syllogisms  in  Com- 
prehension ;  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Quantification  of 
the  Predicate.  To  the  former  of  these,  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton ascribed  great  importance.  According  to  him,  all 
previous  logicians,  "  with  the  doubti'ul  exception  of 
"  Aristotle,"  "  have  altogether  overlooked  the  reasoning 
"in  Comprehension" — "have  marvellously  overlooked 
"  one,  and  that  the  simplest  and  most  natural  of  these 
"  descriptions  of  reasoning, — the  reasoning  in  the  quan- 
"  tity  of  comprehension :"  and  he  claims,  in  directing 
attention  to  it,  to  have  "  relieved  a  radical  defect  and 
vital  inconsistency  in  the  present  logical  system."*  For 
the  other  theory,  that  of  the  Quantification  of  the  Pre- 
dicate, still  loftier  claims  are  advanced  both  by  himself 
and  by  others.  Mr.  Baynes,  with  an  enthusiasm  natural 
and  not  ungraceful  in  a  pupil,  concludes  his  Essay  on 
the  subject  (which  still  remains  the  clearest  exposition 
of  his  master's   doctrine)    with  the  following   words  :f 

*  Lectures,  iii.  297,  304,  378.    Appendix,  iv.  250. 
f  An  Essay  on  the  New  Analytic  of  Logical  Forms,  being  that  whick 


SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON  S  IMPROVEMENTS   IN   LOGIC.    497 

"  We  cannot,  however,  close  without  expressing  the  true 
"joy  we  feel  (though,  were  the  feeling  less  stronc^,  we 
"  might  shrink  from  the  intrusion),  that  in  our  own 
"  country,  and  in  our  time,  this  discovery  has  been  made. 
"  We  rejoice  to  know  that  one  has  at  length  arisen,  able 
"  to  recognise  and  complete  the  plan  of  the  mighty 
''■  builder,  Aristotle, — to  lay  the  top-stone  on  that  fabric, 
"  the  foundations  of  which  were  laid  more  than  two 
"  thousand  years  ago,  by  the  master  hand  of  the  Stagi- 
"  rite,  which,  after  the  labours  of  many  generations  of 
"  workmen,  who  have  from  time  to  time  built  up  one  part 
"  here  and  taken  down  another  there — remains  substan- 
"  tially  as  he  left  it ;  but  which,  when  finished,  shall  be 
'■  seen  to  be  an  edifice  of  wondrous  beauty,  harmony, 
"  and  completeness." 

Previous  to  discussing  these  additions  to  the  Syllogistic 
Theory,  it  is  necessary  to  revert  to  a  doctrine  which  has 
been  briefly  stated  in  a  former  chapter,  but  did  not  then 
receive  all  the  elucidation  it  requires,  and  which  has  a 
most  important  bearing  on  both  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
supposed  discoveries.  This  is,  that  all  Judgments  (ex- 
cept where  both  the  terms  are  proper  names)  are  really 
judgments  in  Comprehension ;  though  it  is  customary, 
and  the  natural  tendency  of  the  mind,  to  express  most  of 
them  in  terras  of  Extension.  In  other  words,  we  never 
really  predicate  anything  but  attributes,  though,  in  the 
usage  of  language,  we  commonly  predicate  them  by 
means  of  words  which  are  names  of  concrete  objects. 

When,  for  example,  I  say.  The  sky  is  blue ;  my  mean- 
ing, and  my  whole  meaning,  is  that  the  sky  has  that  par- 
ticular colour.  I  am  not  thinking  of  the  class  blue,  as 
regards  extension,  at  all.  I  am  not  caring,  nor  neces- 
sarily knowing,  what  blue  things  there  are,  or  if  there  is 
any  blue  thing  except  the  sky.  I  am  thinking  only  of 
the  sensation  of  blue,  and  am  judging  that  the  sky  pro- 

"  gained  the  prize  proposed  by  Sir  William  Hamilton  in  the  year  1846  for 
"  the  best  exposition  of  the  new  Doctrine  propounded  in  his  Lectures. 
"  With  an  Historical  Appendix.  By  Thomas  Spencer  Baynes,  Translator 
"  of  the  Port  Royal  l^ogic  "  (p.  80). 

K  K 


498  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  supposed 

duces  this  sensation  in  my  sensitive  faculty ;  or  (to  ex- 
press the  meaning  in  technical  language)  that  the  quality 
answering  to  the  sensation  of  blue,  or  the  power  of  ex- 
citing the  sensation  of  blue,  is  an  attribute  of  the  sky. 
When  again  I  say,  All  oxen  ruminate,  I  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  predicate,  considered  in  extension.  I  may 
know,  or  be  ignorant,  that  there  are  other  ruminating 
animals  besides  oxen.  Whether  I  do  or  do  not  know 
it,  it  does  not,  unless  by  mere  accident,  pass  through  my 
mind.  In  judging  that  oxen  ruminate,  I  do  not,  unless 
accidentally,  think  under  the  notion  ruminate  (to  borrow 
Sir  W.  Hamilton's  phraseology)  any  other  notion  than 
that  of  an  ox.  The  Comprehension  of  the  predicate — 
the  attribute  or  set  of  attributes  signified  by  it — are  all 
that  I  have  in  my  mind ;  and  the  relation  of  this  attri- 
bute or  these  attributes  to  the  subject,  is  the  entire 
matter  of  the  judgment. 

In  one  of  the  examples  above  given,  the  predicate  is 
an  adjective,  and  in  the  other  a  verb,  which,  in  a  logical 
point  of  view,  is  classed  with  adjectives :  but  its  being  a 
noun  substantive  makes  no  difierence.  For  reasons  easily 
shown,  a  substantive  is  more  strongly  associated  with  the 
ideas  of  the  concrete  objects  denoted  by  it,  than  an  ad- 
jective or  a  verb  is.  But  when  we  predicate  a  substan- 
tive— when  we  say,  Philip  is  a  man,  or,  A  herring  is  a 
fish — do  the  words  man  and  fish  signify  anything  to  us 
but  the  bundles  of  attributes  connoted  by  them  ?  Do  the 
propositions  mean  anything  except  that  Philip  has  the 
human  attributes,  and  a  herring  the  piscine  ones  ?  As- 
suredly not.  Any  notion  of  a  multiude  of  other  men, 
among  whom  Philip  is  ranked,  or  a  variety  of  fishes 
besides  herrings,  is  foreign  to  the  proposition.  The  pro- 
position does  not  decide  whether  there  is  this  additional 
quantity  or  no.  It  affirms  the  attributes  of  its  own  par- 
ticular subject,  and  of  no  other. 

Passing  now  from  the  predicate  to  the  subject,  we 
shall  find  that  the  subject  also,  if  a  general  term  or 
notion,  is  always  construed  in  Comprehension,  that  is, 
by  the  attributes  which  constitute  it,  and  has  no  other 


IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FORMAL   LOGIC.  499 

meaning  in  thought.  When  I  judge  that  all  oxen  rumi- 
nate, what  do  I  mean  by  all  oxen?  I  have  no  image 
in  my  mind  of  all  oxen.  I  do  not,  nor  ever  shall,  know- 
all  of  them,  and  T  am  not  thinking  even  of  all  those 
I  do  know.  "  All  oxen,"  in  my  thoughts,  does  not 
mean  particular  animals — it  means  the  objects,  whatever 
they  may  be,  that  have  the  attributes  by  which  oxen 
are  recognised,  and  which  compose  the  notion  of  an  ox. 
Wherever  these  attributes  shall  be  found,  there,  as  I 
judge,  the  attribute  of  ruminating  will  be  found  also : 
that  is  the  entire  purport  of  the  judgment.  Its  meaning 
is  a  meaning  in  attributes,  and  nothing  else.  It  supposes 
subjects,  but  merely  as  all  attributes  suppose  them. 

But  there  is  another  mode  of  interpreting  the  same 
proposition,  by  considering  it  as  a  part  of  the  statement 
of  a  classification  and  mental  co-ordination  of  the  objects 
which  exist  in  nature.  The  proposition  is  then  looked 
upon  as  an  assertion  respecting  given  objects ;  aflBrming 
what  other  individual  objects  they  are  classed  among  by 
the  general  scheme  of  human  language.  Thus  interpreted, 
the  proposition  "all  oxen  ruminate"  may  be  read  as 
follows  :  If  all  creatures  that  ruminate  were  collected  in 
a  vast  plain,  and  I  were  required  to  search  the  world 
and  point  out  all  oxen,  they  would  all  be  found  among 
the  crowd  on  that  plain,  and  none  anywhere  else.  More- 
over, this  would  have  been  the  case  in  all  past  time,  and 
will  at  any  future,  while  the  present  order  of  nature 
lasts.  This  is  the  proposition  "All  oxen  ruminate" 
interpreted  in  Extension.  Will  an}'  one  say  that  a  pro- 
cess of  thought  like  this  passes  in  the  mind  of  whoever 
makes  the  affirmation  ?  It  is  a  point  of  view  in  which  the 
proposition  may  be  regarded ;  it  is  one  of  the  aspects  of 
the  fact  asserted  in  the  proposition.  But  it  is  not  the 
aspect  in  which  the  proposition  presents  it  to  the  mind. 

It  will,  however,  very  naturally  be  objected — If  th© 
meaning  in  oul*  mind  is  that  the  bovine  attributes  are 
always  accompanied  by  the  attribute  of  ruminating,  why 
do  we,  except  for  the  purposes  of  abstract  logic  or  meta- 
physics, never  say  this,  but  always  say  "  All  oxen  rumi* 

KK   2 


500  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  supposed 

jiate  ?"  The  reason  is,  that  we  have  no  other  convenient 
and  compact  mode  of  speaking*.  Most  attributes,  and 
nearly  all  large  "  bundles  of  attributes,"  have  no  names 
of  their  own.  We  can  only  name  them  by  a  circum- 
locution. We  are  accustomed  to  speak  of  attributes  not 
by  names  given  to  themselves,  but  by  means  of  tlie  names 
which  they  give  to  the  objects  they  are  attributes  of. 
We  do  not  talk  of  the  phsenomena  which  accompany 
piscinity;  we  talk  of  the  phaenomena  of  fishes'.  We  do 
not  frame  a  definition  of  piscinity,  but  a  definition  of  a 
fish.  The  definition,  however,  of  a  fish  is  exactly  the 
same  which  the  definition  of  piscinity  would  be  ;  it  is  an 
enumeration  of  the  same  attributes.  Language  is  con- 
structed upon  the  principle  of  naming  concrete  objects 
first :  it  does  not  always  name  abstractions  at  all,  and 
when  it  does,  the  names  are  almost  always  derived  from 
those  of  concrete  objects.  The  reasons  are  obvious. 
Objects — even  classes  of  objects — being  conceivable  by 
a  much  less  effort  of  abstraction  than  attributes,  are  in 
the  necessary  order  of  things  conceived  and  named 
earlier,  and  remain  always  more  familiar  to  the  mind : 
attributes,  even  when  they  come  to  be  conceived,  cannot 
be  conceived  in  a  detached  state,  but  are  always  (as  may  be 
said  by  an  adaptation  of  the  Hamiltonian  phraseology) 
thought  through  objects  of  some  sort.  Consequently  all 
familiar  propositions  are  expressed  in  the  language  which 
denotes  objects,  and  not  in  that  which  denotes  attributes. 
Nor  is  this  all.  What  is  primarily  important  to  us  in  our 
sensations  and  impressions,  is  their  permanent  groups. 
In  our  particular  and  passing  sensations  (unless  in  cases 
of  exceptional  intensity)  the  important  thing  to  us  is,  not 
the  sensation  itself,  but  to  what  group  it  belongs ;  what 
concrete  object,  what  Permanent  Possibility  of  Sensation, 
it  indicates  the  presence  of.  The  mind  consequently 
hurries  on  from  the  sensible  impressions  that  proceed  from  ■ 
an  outward  object,  to  the  object  itself,  and  its  subsequent 
ithoughts  revolve  round  that.  It  is  on  the  concrete 
obejct  indicated,  that  the  expectation  of  future  sensa- 
tions depeads ;  and  the  concrete  object,  consequently,  in 


IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FORMAL   LOGIC.  501 

roost  cases,  exclusively  engages  our  thoughts,  and  stimu- 
lates us  to  mark  it  by  a  name.  The  name,  to  answer  its 
purpose,  must  remind  ourselves,  and  inform  others,  of 
the  sensations  we  or  they  liave  to  expect :  that  is,  it 
must  connote  an  attribute,  or  set  of  attributes.  And 
men  did  not  at  first  name  attributes  in  any  other  than 
this  indirect  manner.  They  gave  no  direct  names  to 
attributes,  because  they  did  not  conceive  attributes  as 
having  any  separate  existence.  As  they  began  by  naming 
only  concrete  objects,  so  the  first  names  by  which  they 
expressed  even  the  results  of  abstraction,  were  not  names 
of  attributes  in  the  abstract,  regarded  apart  from  their 
objects,  but  names  of  concrete  objects  signifying  the  pre- 
sence of  the  attributes.  Men  talked  of  blue,  or  of  blue 
things,  before  they  talked  of  blueness.  Even  when  they 
did  talk  of  blueness,  it  was  originally  not  as  the  attri- 
bute, but  as  an  imaginary  cause  of  the  attribute,  which 
cause  they  figured  to  themselves  as  itself  a  concrete 
thing,  residing  in  the  object. 

It  thus  appears  that  though  all  judgments  consist  in 
ascribing  attributes,  the  original  and  natural  mode  of  ex- 
pressing them  was  by  general  names  denoting  concrete  ob- 
jects, and  only  connoting  attributes  ;  and  by  the  structure 
of  language  this  remains  the  only  concise  mode,  and  the 
only  one  which,  addressing  itself  to  familiar  associations, 
conveys  the  meaning  at  once,  to  minds  not  exercised  in 
metaphysical  abstraction.  But  this  does  not  alter  the  ob- 
vious truth,  that  concrete  objects  are  only  known  by  attri- 
butes, are  only  distinguished  by  attributes,  and  that  the 
concrete  names  by  which  we  speak  of  them  mean  nothing 
but  attributes,  or  "  bundles  of  attributes."  Oar  represen- 
tation in  thought  of  a  concrete  object  is  but  a  representa- 
tion of  attributes,  and  our  concept  of  a  class  of  concrete 
objects  is  but  a  certain  portion  of  those  attributes,  not, 
indeed,  separately  conceived  or  imaged,  but  exclusively 
attended  to.  There  is,  therefore,  nothing  in  our  mind 
when  we  affirm  a  general  proposition,  but  attributes,  and 
their  coexistence  or  repugnance  :  and  the  position  is  made 
out,  that  all  judgments,  expressed  by  means  of  general 


502  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  supposed 

terms,  are  judgments  in  Comprehension,  though  always, 
-unless  for  some  special  purpose,  expressed  in  Extension. 

If  this  be  the  true  doctrine  of  Judgments,  what  is 
meant  by  saying  that  there  are  two  sorts  of  Judgment, 
one  in  Extension,  the  other  in  Comprehension,  and  two 
kinds  of  reasoning  corresponding  to  these,  one  of  which, 
that  in  Comprehension,  had  been  overlooked  by  all 
logicians,  except  possibly  Aristotle,  up  to  the  time  of 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  ?  All  our  ordinary  judgments  are  in 
Comprehension  only.  Extension  not  being  thought  of. 
But  we  may,  if  we  please,  make  the  Extension  of  our 
general  terms  an  express  object  of  thought,  and  this  may 
be  called  thinking  in  Extension,  though  it  is  rather 
thinking  about  Extension.  When  I  judge  that  all  oxen 
ruminate,  1  have  nothing  in  my  thoughts  but  the  attri- 
butes and  their  coexistence.  But  when,  by  reflection,  I 
perceive  what  the  proposition  implies,  I  remark,  that 
other  things  may  ruminate  besides  oxen  ;  and  that  the 
unknown  multitude  of  things  which  ruminate  form  a 
mass,  with  which  the  unknow^n  multitude  of  things 
having  the  attributes  of  oxen  is  either  identical,  or  is 
wholly  comprised  in  it.  Which  of  these  two  is  the 
truth  I  may  not  know,  and  if  1  did,  took  no  notice  of  it 
when  I  assented  to  the  proposition  "  all  oxen  ruminate.'' 
But  I  perceive,  on  consideration,  that  one  or  other  of 
them  must  be  true.  Though  I  had  not  this  in  my  mind 
when  I  affirmed  that  all  oxen  ruminate,  I  can  have  it 
now;  I  can  make  the  concrete  objects  denoted  by  each 
of  the  two  names  an  object  of  thought,  as  a  collective 
though  indefinite  aggregate ;  in  other  words,  I  can  make 
the  Extension  of  the  names  (or  notions)  an  object  of 
direct  consciousness.  When  I  do  this,  I  perceive  that 
this  operation  introduces  no  new  fact,  but  is  only  a  dif- 
ferent mode  of  contemplating  the  very  fact  which  I  had 
previously  expressed  by  the  words  "  all  oxen  rumi- 
nate." The  fact  is  the  same,  but  the  mode  of  contem- 
plating it  is  different :  the  mental  operation,  the  act  of 
tliought,  is  not  only  a  distinct  act,  but  an  act  of  a 
different  kind. 

There  is  thus,  in  all  propositions  (save  those  in  which 


IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FORMAL    LOGIC.  503 

both  terms  are  Proper,  that  is,  in  sij^nificant,  names)  a  judg- 
ment concerning  attributes  (called  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  a 
judgment  in  Comprehension),  which  we  make  as  a  matter 
of  course,  and  a  possible  judgment  in  or  concerning  Ex- 
tension, which  we  may  make,  and  which  will  be  true  if 
the  former  is  true.  Nevertheless  (as  has  just  been 
shown),  the  conditions  of  primitive  thought,  and  subse- 
quent convenience,  cause  us  generally  to  enunciate  our 
propositions  in  terms  appropriate  to  the  derivative  judg- 
ment which  we  seldom  make,  rather  than  to  the  primi- 
tive judgment  which  we  always  make.  And  this  explains 
why,  though  the  meaning  of  all  propositions  in  which 
general  terms  are  used  is  in  Comprehension,  writers  on 
logic  always  explain  the  rules  of  the  Syllogism  in  refe- 
rence to  Extension  alone.  It  is  because  the  framers  of 
the  rules  did  not  concern  themselves  with  propositions 
or  reasonings  as  they  exist  in  thought,  but  only  as  they 
are  expressed  in  language.  And  in  this  they  were 
justified.  For  the  syllogism  is  not  the  form  in  which 
we  necessarily  reason,  bat  a  test  of  reasming:  a  form 
into  which  we  may  translate  any  reasoning,  with  the 
effect  of  exposing  all  the  points  at  which  any  unwar- 
ranted inference  can  have  got  in.  According  to  this 
view  of  the  Syllogism — for  the  justification  of  which  1 
must  refer  to  the  Second  Book  of  my  System  of  Logic — 
the  syllogistic  theory  is  only  concerned  with  providing 
forms  suitable  to  test  the  validity  of  inferences ;  and  it 
was  not  necessary  that  the  forms  in  which  reasoning  was 
direc  ed  to  be  written,  should  be  those  in  which  it  is 
carried  on  in  thought,  so  long  as  they  are  practically 
equivalent,  that  is,  so  long  as  the  propositions  in  words 
are  always  true  or  false  according  as  the  judgments  in 
thought  are  so.  The  propositions  in  Extension,  being, 
in  this  sense,  exactly  equivalent  to  the  judgments  in 
Comprehension,  served  quite  as  well  to  ground  forms  of 
ratiocination  upon :  and  as  the  validity  of  the  forms  was 
more  easily  and  conveniently  shown  through  the  con- 
crete conception  of  comparing  classes  of  objects,  than 
through  the  abstract  one  of  recognising  coexistence  of 
attributes,  logicians  were  perfectly  justified  in  taking  the 


504  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  supposed 

course,  which,  in  any  case,  the  established  forms  of  lan- 
guage would  doubtless  have  forced  upon  them.  They 
are  thus  deserving  of  no  blame,  though  their  mode  of 
proceeding  has  been  attended  with  some  practical  mis- 
chief, by  diverting  the  attention  of  thinkers  from  what 
really  constitutes  the  meaning  of  Propositions.  It  has 
also  been  one  of  the  causes  of  tlie  prejudice  so  general 
in  the  last  three  centuries,  against  the  syllogistic  theory. 
For  a  doctrine  which  detined  one  of  the  two  great  pro- 
cesses of  the  discovery  of  truth  as  consisting  in  the 
operation  of  placing  objects  in  a  class  and  then  finding 
them  there,  can  never,  I  think,  have  really  satisfied  any 
competent  thinker,  however  he  may  have  acquiesced  in 
it  for  want  of  a  better.  There  must  always  have  been 
a  dormant  sense  of  discontent,  an  obscure  feeling  that 
this  was  a  description  of  the  reasoning  processs  by  one  of 
its  accidents,  though  an  inseparable  accident.* 

*  Dr.  M'Oosli  lias  some  partially  just  observations  on  this  subject.  He  ad- 
mits (p.  292)  that  "in  by  far  the  greater  number  of  propositions,  the  primary 
"and  uppermost  sense  is  in  Comprehension."  He  says,  however  (p.  294), 
that  in  some,  '•  the  uppermost  thought  is  in  Extension.  Thus,  when  the 
"  young  student  of  Natural  History  is  told  that  a  crocodile  is  a  reptile, 
"  his  idea  is  of  a  class,  of  which  he  may  afterwards  learn  the  marks." 
And  it  is  true  that  when  the  known  purpose  of  the  statement  is  to  declare 
what  place  the  object  occupies  in  a  classification,  a  fact  of  classification  is 
the  real  meaning  of  the  proposition.  This  is  emphatically  the  exception 
which  proves  the  rule.  Dr.  M'Cosh  adds,  "  the  mind  in  its  discursive 
"  operations  tends  to  go  on  from  Comprehension  to  Extension."  This  I 
admit ;  but  the  thought  in  Comprehension  comes  first :  the  thought  in 
Extension  rests  on  the  thought  in  Comprehension,  and  follows  it ;  but  is 
so  closely  linked  with  it  that  it  can  hardly  help  following.  The  circum- 
stance, however,  that  the  proposition  is  familiarly  expressed  in  concrete 
language,  does  not  prove  it  to  be  thought  in  Extension.  The  practice  of 
so  expressing  it  must,  no  doubt,  as  Dr.  M'Cosh  says,  "  proceed  from  some 
law  of  thought  as  applied  to  things  ;"  but  the  law  of  thought  it  proceeds 
from  is  merely  the  obvious  one,  that  concrete  language,  requiring  for  its 
formation  a  lower  degree  of  abstraction,  was  earliest  formed,  took  posses- 
sion of  the  field,  and  is  still  the  most  familiar.  "When  Dr.  M'Cosh  goes 
on  to  say  (p.  303)  that  although  "  so  far  as  propositions  are  concerned, 
"  spontaneous  thought  is  chiefly  in  Compi-ehension,"  the  case  is  "  difierent 
"  in  regard  to  reasoning,  the  uppermost  thought  in  which  is  always  in 
"  Extension,"  I  cannot  agree  with  him.  If  the  meaning,  in  consciousness, 
of  the  premises  when  separate,  is  in  Comprehension,  it  is  not  natural  that 
the  derivative  and  subordinate  meaning  in  Extension  should  leap  to  the 
front  as  soon  as  the  premises  are  brought  together.  But  if,  instead  of 
"  in  reasoning,"  Dr.  M'Cosh  had  said  '"  in  the  artificial  formula  of  K-easou- 
ing  called  Syllogism,"  I  think  he  would  have  been  right. 


IMPROVEMENTS   IN    FORMAL    LOGIC.  505 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  distinguishes  two  kinds  of  Syllogism, 
Extensive  and  Comprehensive.  "  For  while*  every  syl- 
"  logism  infers  that  tlie  part  of  a  part  is  a  part  of  the 
"  whole,  it  does  this  either  in  the  quantity  of  Extension 
" — the  Predicate  oF  the  two  notions  compared  in  the 
"  Question  and  Conclusion  heing  the  greatest  whole,  and 
"  the  subject  the  smallest  part ;  or  in  the  counter  quan- 
"  tity  of  Comprehension,  the  subject  of  these  two  notions 
"  being  the  greatest  whole,  and  the  Predicate  the  smallest 
"  part."  He  acknowledges,  however,  that  both  syllogisms 
are  identically  the  same  argument ;  "  every  syllogism  in 
"  the  one  quantity  being  convertible  into  a  syllogism  ab- 
"solutely  equivalent  in  the  other  quantity."  And  what 
is  the  difference  in  form  and  languagre  between  tlie  two 
syllogisms?  According  to  our  author  it  is  merely  a 
difference  in  the  order  of  the  premises.     The  following,t 

"  Every  morally  responsible  agent  is  a  free  agent ; 

"  Man  is  a  morally  responsible  agent ; 

"  Therefore  man  is  a  free  agent," 
is,  according  to  him,  a  syllogism  in  Extension.     Trans- 
pose the  premises,  and  write  it  thus,! 

"  Man  is  a  responsible  agent ; 

"  But  a  responsible  agent  is  a  free  agent ; 

"  Therefore,  man  is  a  free  agent," 
and  we  have,  according  to  him,  a  syllogism  in  Compre- 
hension. Far,  however,  from  constituting  two  kinds  of 
reasoning,  this  does  not  even  supply  us  with  two  different 
forms  of  it.  He  himself  says  elsewhere,§  that  "the 
"  transposition  of  the  propositions  of  a  syllogism  affords 
"  no  modihcations  of  form  yielding  more  than  a  super- 
"  ficial  character."  And  even  this  superficial  difference 
he  with  his  own  hands  abolishes,  saying,!  that  any  syllo- 
gism whatever  "  can  be  perspicuously  expressed  not  only 
"  by  the  normal,  but  by  any  of  the  five  consecutions  of 
"  its  propositions  which  deviate  from  the  regular  order," 
and   that    "  a  syllogism   in   Comprehension  is   equally 

*  Lectures,  iii.  286,  287. 
t  Lectures,  iii.  p.  270.  +  Ibid.  p.  273. 

§  Ibid.  p.  39d.  '  t  Ibid.  pp.  397,  398. 


50fi  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  supposed 

*'  susceptible  of  a  transposition  of  its  propositions  as  a 
"  syllogism  in  Extension."  So  that  the  slight  distinction 
of  form  which  he  seemed  at  first  to  contend  ibr,  does  not 
exist ;  a  Syllogism  in  Comprehension,  and  the  corre- 
sponding Syllogism  in  Extension,  are  word  for  word  the 
same.  Instead  of  "  every  syllogism  in  the  one  quantity" 
being  "  convertible  into  a  syllogism,  absolutely  equivalent 
in  the  other  quantity,"  every  syllogism  is  already  a 
syllogism  in  both  quantities.* 

The  distinction,  therefore,  is  not  between  two  kinds, 
or  even  between  two  forms,  of  syllogism,  but  between 
tyvo  modes  of  construing  the  meaning  of  the  same  syllo- 
gism.    And  what  are  these  two  modes?     Sir  W.  Ha- 
milton says,  that  they  are  distinguished  by  a  difference 
in  the  meaning  of  the  copula.     "  Inf  the  one  process, 
'  that,  to  wit,  in  extension,  the  copula  is,  means  is  con- 
'  tained  under,  whereas  in  the  other,  it  means  comprehends 
'  in.     Thus,  the  proposition  God  is  merciful,  viewed  as 
'  in  the  one  quantity,  signifies   God  is  contained  under 
'  merciful,  that  is,  the  notion  God  is  contained  under  the 
^  notion  merciful ;  viewed  as  in  the  other,  means,   God 
'  comprehends  merciful,  that  is,  the  notion  God  compre- 
'  hands  in  it  the  notion  merciful!^ 

I  cannot  admit  this  to  be  a  true  analysis  of  the  meaning 
of  the  proposition,  either  in  Extension  or  in  Compre- 
hension.    The  statement  that  Grod  is  merciful  I  construe 

*  It  is  curious  to  observe  with  what  facility  Sir  W.  Hamilton  drives  two 
conflicting  opinions  together  in  a  team.  The  passages  quoted  in  the  text 
are  destructive  of  any  notion  of  a  different  order  of  the  premises  in  a 
Syllogism  of  Extension  and  in  one  of  Comprehension.  Yet  this  notion 
maintains  full  possession  of  our  author's  mind.  We  have  found  him 
accusing  all  logical  writers  of  overL  oking  Reasoning  in  Comprehension ; 
but  he  thinks  that  they  exceptionally  recognised  it  in  the  case  of  the 
Sorites,  and  that  in  that  case,  by  a  contrary  error,  they  "  altogether  over- 
"  looked  the  possibility  of  a  Reasoning  in  Extension"  (Lectures,  iii.  379-384), 
solely  because,  in  the  Sorites,  they  inverted  the  usual  order  of  the  premises. 
On  a  similar  foundation  stands  his  charge  against  the  Fourth  Figure,  of 
being  "  a  monster  undeserving  of  toleration,"  because  instead  of  keeping 
to  one  of  the  two  quantities,  Extension  and  Comprehension,  it  reasons  (he 
says)  across  from  one  of  them  to  the  other.  This  is  merely  because  the 
Fourth  Figure,  while  it  draws  the  same  conclusion  which  might  have  been 
drawn  in  the  First,  reverses  the  order  of  the  premises.  (Lectures,  iii. 
42.:)- 128.) 

t  Lectures,  iii.  274. 


IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FORMAL    LOGIC.  507 

as  an  affirmation  not  concerning  the  notion  God,  but  the 
Being  God.  Interpreted  in  Compreliension  I  hold  it  to 
mean,  that  this  Being  has  the  attribute  signified  by  the 
word  merciful,  or,  in  our  author's  language,  comprehended 
in  the  concept.  Interpreted  in  Extension  I  render  it 
thus :  the  Being,  God,  is  either  the  only  being,  or  one 
of  the  beings,  forming  the  class  merciful,  or,  in  other 
words,  possessing  the  attribute  mercifulness.  Thus  stated, 
who  can  doubt  which  of  the  two  is  the  original  and  na- 
tural judgment,  and  which  is  a  derivative  and  artificial 
mode  of  restating  it  ?  The  difference  between  them  is 
slight,  but  real,  and  consists  in  this,  that  the  second 
construction  introduces  the  idea  of  other  possible  merciful 
beings,  an  idea  not  suggested  by  the  first  construction. 
1'his  suggestion  gives  rise  to  the  idea  of  a  class  merci- 
ful, and  of  God  as  a  member  of  that  class :  notions 
which  are  not  present  to  the  mind  at  all  when  it  simpl}' 
assents  to  the  proposition  that  God  is  merciful.  To 
make  a  distinction  between  Reasoning  in  Extension  and 
in  Comprehension,  when  the  same  syllogism  serves  for 
both,  could  only  be  admissible  if  we  employed  the  same 
words  having  sometimes  in  our  mind  the  meaning  in 
Extension,  sometimes  that  in  Comprehension  :  but  in 
reality  all  reasoning  is  thought  solely  in  Comprehension, 
except  when  we,  for  a  technical  purpose,  perlorm  a  second 
act  of  thought  upon  the  Extension — which  in  general 
we  do  not,  and  have  no  need  to,  consider. 

Nor  is  this  the  only  objection  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
doctrine.  There  is  another,  less  obvious,  but  equally 
fatal.  The  statement  in  Comprehension  is,  that  A  has 
the  attributes  comprehended  in  B.  The  statement  in 
Extension  is,  that  A  belongs  to  the  class  of  things 
which  have  the  attributes  comprehended  in  B.  These 
statements  are  either,  as  1  affirm  them  to  be,  one  and  the 
same  assertion  in  slightly  different  words,  or  they  are 
different  assertions.  If  they  are  the  same  assertion,  there 
is  but  one  judgment,  which  is  both  in  Extension  and  in 
Comprehension,  and  but  one  kind  of  reasoning,  which  is 
in  both.     But  supposing  them,  for  the  sake  of  argument. 


508  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  supposed 

to  be  two  different  assertions,  the  judgment  respecting 
l!]xtension  is  a  corollary  from  that  in  Comprehension, 
expressing  an  artificial  point  of  view  in  which  we  may 
regard  the  natural  judgment.  Now,  on  this  supposition, 
that  the  judgment  respecting  Extension  is  not  the  same, 
but  an  additional  judgment,  it  is,  like  all  other  judg- 
ments, a  judgment  in  Comprehension.  "A  is  part  of 
class  B"  must  be  interpreted  thus:  The  phsenomenon 
A  possesses,  or  the  concept  A  comprehends,  the  attribute 
of  being  included  in  the  class  B.  So  that,  while  every 
judgment  in  Comprehension  warrants,  by  way  of  imme- 
diate inference,  a  corresponding  judgment  respecting 
Exten.sion,  this  very  judgment  respecting  Extension  is 
itself  but  a  particular  kind  of  judgment  in  Comprehen- 
sion. Even,  therefore,  on  the  untenable  doctrine  that 
there  are  two  different  judgments  in  the  case,  the  dis- 
tinction between  judgments  in  Extension  and  judgments 
in  Comprehension  is  not  sustainable ;  and  the  supposed 
addition  to  the  theory  of  the  Syllogism  is  a  mere  ex- 
crescence and  incumbrance  on  it. 

How  great  the  incumbrance  is,  all  are  able  to  judge, 
who  follow  our  author  through  the  details  of  the  syllo- 
gistic logic.  He  not  only  finds  it  necessary  to  expound 
and  demonstrate  every  one  of  the  doctrines  twice  over, 
as  adapted  to  Extension  and  to  Comprehension,  but 
struggles  to  express  all  the  fundamental  principles  in  a 
manner  combining  both  points  of  view ;  and  is  thereby 
compelled  either  to  state  those  principles  in  terms  too 
wide  and  abstract  for  easy  apprehension,  in  order  that 
what  is  laid  down  respecting  wholes  and  their  parts  may 
be  applicable  to  both  kinds  of  wholes  (in  Extension  and  in 
Comprehension),  or  else  to  embarrass  the  learner  with  the 
necessity  of  carrying  on  two  trains  of  thought  at  once,  in 
the  attempt  to  apprehend  a  single  principle.  I  need  not 
dwell  on  the  additional  error,  of  considering  the  relation 
of  whole  and  parts  as  the  foundation  of  the  Syllogism  in 
both  aspects.  To  the  point  of  view  of  Extension  that 
relation  is  applicable,  in  every  affirmative  proposition,  if 
true,  the  object  or  class  of  objects  denoted  by  the  sub- 


IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FORMAL    LOGIC.  509 

ject  is  a  part  (when  it  is  not  the  whole)  of  the  class  of 
objects  denoted  by  the  predicate.  But  no  similar  rela- 
tion exists  berween  the  two  "  bundles  of  attributes"  com- 
prehended in  the  subject  and  in  the  predicate,  except  in 
the  case  of  Analytical  Judgments,  that  is,  of  merely 
verbal  propositions.  In  Synthetical  Judgments,  that  is, 
in  all  propositions  which  convey  information  about  any- 
thing except  the  meaning  of  words,  the  relation  between 
the  two  sets  of  attributes  is  not  a  relation  of  Whole  and 
Part,  but  a  relation  of  Coexistence. 

I  now  pass  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Quantification  of  the 
Predicate ;  examining  it  by  the  light  of  the  same  prin- 
ciples which  we  have  applied  to  the  distinction  between 
the  supposed  two  kinds  of  Eeasoning. 

It  will  be  desirable  to  state  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
own  words,  as  first  published  in  1846,  the  claims  he 
prefers  in  behalf  of  this  doctrine,  and  the  important  con- 
sequences to  which  he  considers  it  to  lead.* 

"  The  self  evident  truth, — That  we  can  only  ration- 
"  ally  deal  with  what  we  already  understand,  determines 
"  the  simple  logical  postulate, — To  state  esnplicitly  what  is 
*'  thought  implicitly.  From  the  consistent  application  of 
"this  postulate,  on  which  Logic  ever  insists,  but  which 
"^Logicians  have  never  fairly  obeyed,  it  follows : — that, 
*'  logically,  we  ought  to  take  into  account  the  quantity, 
*' always  understood  in  thought,  but  usually,  and  for 
"  manifest  reasons,  elided  in  its  expression,  not  only  of 
*'  the  subject,  but  also  of  the  predicate  of  a  judgment. 
"  This  being  done,  and  the  necessity  of  doing  it  will  be 
"  proved  against  Aristotle  and  his  repeaters,  we  obtain, 
*'  ijiter  alia,  the  ensuing  results  : 

"  1°.  That  the  preindesignate  terms  of  a  proposition, 
"  whether  subject  or  predicate,  are  never,  on  that  ac- 
**  count,  thought  as  indefinite  (or  indeterminate)  in  quan- 
"  tity.  The  only  indefinite,  is  particular,  as  opposed  to 
**  definite,  quantity ;  and  this  last,  as  it  is  either  of  an 
*'  extensive  maximum  undivided,  or  of  an  extensive  mini- 
"  mum  indivisible,  constitutes  quantity  universal  (general) 

*  Discussions,  Appeadix  ii.  pp.  650,  651. 


510  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  supposed 

"  and  quantity  singular  (individual).  In  fact,  definite  and 
"  indefinite  are  the  Only  quantities  of  which  we  ought 
"to  hear  in  Logic;  for  it  is  only  as  indefinite  that 
"  particular,  it  is  only  as  definite  that  individual  and 
*'  general,  quantities  have  any  (and  the  same)  logical 
"  avail. 

"2°.  The  revocation  of  the  two  terms  of  a  Proposition 
"to  \he\v  true  relation ;  a  proposition  being  always  an 
'*  equation  of  its  subject  and  its  predicate. 

"  3".  The  consequent  reduction  of  the  Conversion  of 
<■<■  Propositions  from  three  species  to  07ie — that  of  Simple 
"  Conversion. 

"  4°.  The  reduction  of  all  the  General  Laws  of  Cafe- 
''^ gorical  Syllogisms  to  a  Single  Canon. 

"  5°.  The  evolution  from  that  one  canon  of  all  the 
"  species  and  varieties  of  Syllogism. 

"  6°.  The  adrogation  of  all  the  Special  Laws  of  Syllogism. 

"7°.  A  demonstration  of  the  exclusive  Possibility  of 
"  Three  Syllogistic  Figures ;  and  (on  new  grounds)  the 
"scientific  and  final  aholttion  of  the  Fourth. 

"  8°.  A  manifestation  that  Figure  is  an  unessential 
"  variation  in  syllogistic  form ;  and  the  consequent  ab- 
"  surdity  of  Reducing  the  syllogisms  of  the  other  figures 
"to  the  first. 

"  9°.  An  enouncement  of  one  Organic  Principle  for 
"  each  Figure. 

"  10°.  A  determinafion  of  the  true  number  of  the 
"  legitimate  Moods,  with 

"  11°.  Their  amplificatiofi  in  number  {thirty-six)  \ 

"  12°.  Their  numerical  equality  under  all  the  figures; 
"and 

"  13°.  Their  relative  equivalence,  or  virtual  identity, 
"  throughout  every  schematic  difference. 

"  14°.  That  in  the  second  and  third  figures,  the  ex- 
"  tremes  holding  both  the  same  relation  to  the  middle 
"  term,  there  is  not,  as  in  the  first,  an  opposition  and 
"  subordination  between  a  term  major  and  a  term  minor 
"  mutually  containing  and  contained,  in  the  counter  wholes 
"  of  Extension  and  Comprehension. 


IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FORAIAL    LOGIC.  511 

"15°.  Consequently,  in  the  second  and  third  figures, 
"  there  is  no  determinate  major  and  minor  premise,  and 
"there  are  two  indifferent  conclusions;  whereas,  in  the 
'"'first,  the  premises  are  determinate,  and  there  is  a  sruf/le 
^''proximate  conclusion . 

"  16°.  That  the  tliird,  as  the  figure  in  which  Compre- 
*'  hension  is  predominant,  is  more  appropriate  to  Induction. 

"  17°.  That  the  second,  as  the  figure  in  which  Exten- 
'^  sion  '\<  predominant,  is  more  appropriate  to  Deduction. 

'*  18°.  That  the^r*^',  as  the  figure  in  which  Compre' 
"  hension  and  Extension  are  in  equiHbrium,  is  common  to 
*''  Induction  and  Deduction  indifferently." 

The  doctrine  which  leads  to  all  these  consequences,  or 
rather,  which  necessitates  all  these  changes  of  expression 
(for  they  are  no  more),  is  that  the  Predicate  is  always 
quantified  in  thought ;  that  we  always  think  it  either  as 
signifying  the  whole,  or  as  signifying  only  a  part,  of 
the  objects  included  in  its  Extension.  "  In  reality  and 
"  in  thought,  every  quantit}^  is  necessarily  either  all,  or 
"  some,  or  none."*  The  proposition.  All  A  is  B,  must 
mean,  in  thought,  either  All  A  is  all  B,  or  All  A  is  sotne 
B.  When  I  judge  that  all  oxen  ruminate,  it  must  not 
only  be  true,  but  I  must  mean,  either  that  All  ox  is  all 
ruminating,  or  that  AH  ox  is  some  ruminating.  Logic, 
therefore,  postulates  to  express  in  words  what  is  already 
in  the  thoughts,  and  to  write  all  propositions  in  one 
or  other  of  these  forms  ;  which  makes  it  necessary  that 
all  the  rules  for  reasoning  should  be  altered,  at  least  in 
expression,  and  grounded  on  the  relation  of  exact  equality 
between  the  terms. 

But  if,  as  I  have  endeavoured  to  show,  the  predicate 
B  is  present  in  thought  only  in  respect  of  its  Compre- 
hension ;  if  it  be  an  error  to  suppose  that  it  is  thought  of 

*  Discussiona,  Appendix  ii.  p.  601.  Bat  the  whole  meaninff  of  this 
assertion,  as  available  for  our  author's  purpose,  is  destroyed  by  the  state- 
ment which  he  is  presently  obliged  to  make,  that  "  the  Indesignate  is 
"  thought,  either  precisely,  as  whole  or  as  part,  or  vaguely,  as  the  one  or 
the  otlier,  unknown  which,  hut  the  woree  always  presumed."  The  conces- 
sion, though  fatal  to  himself,  is  short  of  the  truth ;  for  the  Indesignate  is 
not  necessarily  thought  either  as  a  whole,  or  as  part,  or  as  "  unknown 
which;"  it  is  otlen  not  thought  in  any  relation  of  quantity  at  all.  k 


512  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  supposed 

as  an  aggregate  of  objects  at  all ;  still  less  is  it  thought 
of  as  an  aggregate  with  a  determinate  quantity,  as  some 
or  all,  I  repeat  the  appeal  which  I  have  already  made  to 
every  reader's  consciousness :  Does  he,  when  he  judges 
that  all  oxen  ruminate,  advert  even  in  the  minutest  degree 
to  the  question,  whether  there  is  anything  else  which 
ruminates  ?  Is  this  consideration  at  all  in  his  thoughts, 
any  more  than  any  other  consideration  foreign  to  the 
immediate  subject?  One  person  may  know  that  there 
are  other  ruminating  animals,  another  may  think  that 
tliere  are  none,  a  third  may  be  without  any  opinion  on 
the  subject :  but  if  they  all  know  what  is  meant  by 
ruminating,  they  all,  when  they  judge  that  every  ox 
ruminates,  mean  exactly  the  same  thing.  The  mental 
process  they  go  through,  as  far  as  that  one  judgment  is 
concerned,  is  precisely  identical ;  though  some  of  them 
may  go  on  iurther,  and  add  other  judgments  to  it.* 

The  fact,  that  the  proposition  "  Every  A  is  B"  only 
means  every  A  is  some  B,  far  from  being  always  present 
in  thought,  is  not  at  first  seized  without  some  difficulty 
hy  the  tyro  in  logic.  It  requires  a  certain  effort  of 
thought  to  perceive  that  when  we  say,  All  As  are  Bs, 
we  only  identify  A  with  a  portion  of  the  class  B.  When 
the  learner  is  first  told  that  the  proposition  All  As  are 
Bs  can  only  be  converted  in  the  form  "  Some  Bs  are  As," 

*  Not  only  we  do  not  (unless  exceptionally  for  some  special  purpose) 
quantify  the  predicate  in  thought,  but  we  do  not  even  quantify  the  subject, 
in  the  sense  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory  requires.  Even  in  an  uni- 
versal proposition,  we  do  not  think  of  the  subject  as  an  ags;regate  whole, 
but  as  its  several  parts  :  we  do  not  judge  that  all  A  is  B,  but  that  all  As 
are  Bs,  which  is  a  different  thing.  That  what  is  true  of  the  whole  must 
be  true  of  any  part,  only  holds  good  when  the  whole  means  the  parts  them- 
selves, and  not  when  it  means  the  aggregate  of  them.  All  A,  is  a  very 
different  notion  from  Each  A.  What  is  true  of  A  only  as  a  whole,  forms 
no  element  of  a  judgment  concerning  its  parts — even  concerning  all  its 
parts.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  thinks  that  the  relation  of  quantity  in  extension 
which  the  class  A  bears  to  the  class  B,  is  always  present  in  my  thoughts 
■when  I  predicate  B  of  A.  This  relation  of  quantity,  however,  does  not 
belong  to  individual  As,  but  specifically  and  solely  to  A  as  a  whole,  and 
as  a  whole  I  am  not  thinking  of  it.  When  I  am  predicating  B  of  all  As 
severally,  I  am  not  adverting  to  any  property  or  relation  which  belongs  to 
A  as  their  aggregate.  Accordingly  we  do  not  say,  all  ox  ruminates,  but 
all  oxen  ruminate.     The  distinction  is  of  little  importance  when  A  is  only 


IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FORMAL   LOGIC.  513 

I  apprehend  that  this  strikes  him  as  a  new  idea ;  and 
that  the  truth  of  the  statement  is  not  quite  obvious  to 
him,  until  verified  by  a  particular  example  in  which  he 
already  knows  that  the  simple  converse  would  be  false, 
such  as,  All  men  are  animals,  therefore  all  animals  are 
men.  So  far  is  it  from  being  true  that  the  proposition. 
All  As  are  Bs,  is  spontaneously  quantified  in  thought  as 
All  A  is  some  B, 

The  pretension,  therefore,  of  the  doctrine  of  a  Quan- 
tified Predicate,  to  be  a  more  correct  representation  and 
analysis  of  the  reasoning  process  than  the  common  doc- 
trine of  the  syllogism,  I  hold  to  be  psychologically  false. 
And  this  is  fatal  to  the  doctrine,  if  we  admit  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  theory  that  Logic  is  the  science  of  the  laws 
according  to  which  we  mmt  think  in  order  that  our 
thought  may  be  valid.  But  according  to  the  very  dif- 
ferent view  I  myself  take  of  Formal  Logic,  this  doctrinb 
might  still  be  a  valuable  addition  to  it :  since,  in  my 
view,  the  S3dlogistic  theory  altogether  is  not  an  analysis 
of  the  reasoning  process,  but  only  furnishes  a  test  of  the 
validity  of  reasonings,  by  supplying  forms  of  expression 
into  which  all  reasonings  may  be  translated  if  valid,  and 
which,  if  they  are  invalid,  will  detect  the  hidden  Haw.  In 
this  point  of  \iew  it  might  well  be,  that  a  form  which 
always  exhibited  the  quantity  of  the  predicate  might  be 
an  improvement  on  the  common  form.  And  I  am  not 
disposed  to  deny  that  for  occasional  use,  and  for  purposes 
of  illustration,  it  is  so.     The  exposition  of  the  theory  of 

coextensive  with  part  of  B ;  for  if  A  altogetter  is  but  a  part,  still  more 
must  this  be  true  of  any  particular  A,  and  it  is  indifferent  whether 
we  say  all  A  is  some  B,  or  each  of  the  As  is  some  B.  But  it  is  quite 
another  matter  when  the  assertion  is  that  all  A  is  all  B.  This,  if  true  at 
all,  is  true  only  of  A  considered  as  a  whole ;  and  expresses  a  relation 
between  the  two  classes  as  totals,  not  between  either  of  them  and  its 
parts.  Now,  to  affirm  that  when  we  judge  every  A  to  be  a  B,  we  always, 
and  necessarily,  recognise  in  thought  a  fact  which  is  not  true  of  every,  or 
even  of  any  A,  but  only  of  the  aggregate  composed  of  all  As,  seems  to  mo 
as  baseless  a  fancy  as  ever  implanted  itself  in  the  intellect  of  an  eminent 
thinker.  It  is,  in  short  (as  observed  by  one  of  my  correspondents),  a 
conclusive  reason  against  the  assimilation  of  a  judgment  to  an  equation, 
that  in  equations  the  terms  are  used  collectively,  and  in  judgments  mostly 
diatributively. 

L  L 


514  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  supposed 

the  syllogism  is  made  clearer,  by  pointing  out  that  All  As 
are  B  only  implies  that  All  A  is  some  B,  while  No  As 
are  B  excludes  A  from  the  whole  of  B.  This,  in  fact, 
is  taught  to  all  who  learn  logic  in  the  common  way,  by 
what  is  called  the  doctrine  of  Suppositio  ;  or  (in  the  many 
books  which  leave  this  doctrine  out)  by  the  theory  of 
Conversion,  and  the  syllogistic  rules  against  Undistri- 
buted Middle,  and  against  proceeding  a  non  distributo 
ad  distrihutum.  There  is  no  harm,  and  some  little  good, 
in  giving  to  these  essential  doctrines  the  more  explicit 
expression  demanded  for  them  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton. 
But  to  obtain  any  advantage  from  it,  we  must  be  con- 
tent with  quantifying  such  propositions  as,  in  their  un- 
quantified  form,  are  really  asserted  and  used.  To  foist  in 
any  others,  overlays  and  confuses,  instead  of  illuminating, 
the  theory.  "  All  A  is  some  B"  is  inadmissible,  becaus 
it  is  the  quantification  really  implied  in  All  As  are  B ; 
but  "  All  A  is  all  B"  is  inadmissible,  because  it  is  not  the 
equivalent  of  any  single  proposition  capable  of  being 
asserted  in  an  unquantified  form.  As  all  reasoning, 
except  in  the  process  of  teaching  Logic,  will  always  be 
carried  on  in  the  forms  which  men  use  in  real  life ;  and 
as  the  only  purpose  of  providing  other  forms,  is  to  supply 
a  test  for  those  which  are  really  used  ;  it  is  essential  that 
the  forms  provided  should  be  forms  into  which  the  pro- 
positions expressed  in  common  language  can  be  trans- 
lated— that  every  proposition  in  logical  I'orm,  should  be 
the  exact  equivalent  of  some  proposition  in  the  common 
form.  Now,  there  is  no  proposition  capable  of  being 
expressed  in  the  ordinary  form,  which  is  equivalent  to 
the  proposition,  All  A  is  all  B,  That  form  of  expres- 
sion combines  the  import  of  two  propositions  in  common 
language,  expressive  of  two  separate  judgments,  All  As 
are  Bs,  and  all  Bs  are  As. 

If  this  had  not  been  denied,  T  should  have  deemed  it  too 
obvious  to  require  either  proof  or  illustration.  But  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  does  deny  it,  and  therefore  some  enforce- 
ment of  it  is  indispensable.  When  we  make  an  assertion 
in   the    cramped    and   unnatural    form,   All  man  is  all 


IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FORMAL    LOGIC.  515 

rational,  can  anything  seem  more  evident  than  that  to 
cover  the  whole  ground  occupied  by  this  statement,  two 
judgments  are  required ;  namely,  first,  that  every  man 
has  the  attribute  reason ;  and  secondly,  that  nothing 
which  is  not  man  has  that  attribute,  or  (which  is  the 
same  thinof)  that  every  rational  creature  has  the  attri- 
butes of  man  ?  How  is  it  possible  to  make  only  one 
judgment,  out  of  an  assertion  divisible  into  two  parts, 
one  of  which  may  be  unknown  and  the  other  known, 
one  unthought  of  and  the  other  thought  of,  one  false 
and  the  other  true  ?* 

Unless  Sir  W.  Hamilton  was  prepared  to  maintain 
that  whenever  the  universal  converse  of  an  universal 
affirmative  proposition  would  be  true,  we  cannot  know 
the  one  without  knowing  the  other,  it  is  in  vain  for  him 
to  contend  that  a  form  which  asserts  both  of  them  at 
once  is  only  one  proposition.  If  in  judging  that  "  All 
equilateral  triangles  are  equiangular,"  we  judge  that  all 
equilateral  triangles  are  all  equiangular,  in  what  con- 
dition of  judgment  is  the  mind  of  the  tyro  to  whom  it 
has  just  been  proved  that  all  equilateral  triangles  are 
equiangular,  but  who  does  not  yet  know  the  proof  of  the 
converse  proposition  that  all  equiangular  triangles  are 
equilateral?  If  "All  equilateral  triangles  are  all  equi- 
angular" is  only  one  judgment,  what  is  the  proposition 
that  all  equilateral  triangles  are  equiangular  ?  Is  it  half 
a  judgment?! 

*  The  only  answer  I  can  imagine  to  this  is,  that  having  the  two  concepts 
Man  and  Rational,  and  heing  engaged  in  actually  comparing  tbem  with 
each  other,  we  must  perceive  and  judge  whether  the  one  is  merely  a  part 
of  the  other,  or  a  whole  coinciding  with  it.  But  this  answer  is  not  com- 
petent to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  or  any  other  Conceptualist,  to  make.  An 
adversary  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  might  make  it.  I  have  myself  said,  and 
have  offered  as  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  his  analysis  of  Reasoning,  that 
if  we  have  two  concepts  and  compare  them,  we  cannot  but  perceive  any 
relation  of  whole  and  part  which  exists  between  them.  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
however  is  precluded  from  making  this  reply  ;  for  all  Reasoning,  even  to 
the  longest  process  in  Mathematics,  consists,  according  to  him,  in  discover- 
ing this  relation  of  whole  and  part  by  circuitous  means,  when  direct  com- 
parison does  not  disclose  it.  From  this  point  of  view,  therefore,  the  argu- 
ment is  not  tenable  ;  and  from  mine  it  has  no  pertinence,  since  I  do  not 
admit  that  Reasoning  is  a  comparison  of  Concepts  at  all. 

t  Sir  W.  Hamilton  goes  the  length  of  asserting  (Appendix  to  Lectures, 

L  l2 


516  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  supposed 

This  is  not  the  only  case  in  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
insists  upon  wrapping  up  two  different  assertions  in  one 
form  of  words,  and  demands  that  thev  shall  be  con- 
sidered  one  assertion.  He  strenuously  contends  that 
the  form    "  Some  A  is  B,"  or  (in  its  quantified  form) 

iv.  292,  et  seqq.)  that  to  a  person  who  knows  all  trilateral  figures  to  be 
triangular,  the  proposition  "  all  triangles  are  trilateral"  must,  if  expressed 
as  understood,  be  written  "  All  triangles  are  all  trilateral :"  as  if  every 
l)roposition  which  I  affirm  respecting  a  subject,  must  include  all  I  know 
about  it. 

That  the  proposition  All  A  is  B  is  not  a  single  judgment,  but  compounded 
of  two,  has  already  been  urged  against  Sir  W.  Hamilton  by  Mr.  De 
Morgan,  and  we  are  in  possession  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  answer  (Discus- 
sions, Appendix  ii.  pp.  (387,  t)88).  Unhappily  Mr.  De  Morgan  (by  an  over- 
sight not  usual  witb  that  able  thinker)  gave  Sir  W.  Hamilton  an  apparent 
triumph,  by  mistaking  the  two  judgments  which  the  pretended  single  pro- 
position is  composed  of.  He  appears  to  have  said,  that  the  proposition 
"  All  Xs  are  all  Ys,"  is  compounded  of  the  propositions  "  All  Xs  are 
some  Ys,"  and  "  Some  Xs  are  all  Ys."  Sir  W.  Hamilton  replies,  that 
these  two  propositions  are  (in  his  own  peculiar  language)  incom possible, 
inasmuch  as  we  cannot  think  X  both  as  some  Y,  that  is  a  part  of  Y,  and 
as  the  whole.  The  argument  is  little  better  than  a  quibble,  because  other 
people  do  not  (though  Sir  W.  Hamilton  does)  mean  by  some,  some  only ; 
they  mean  some  at  least;  and  if  the  first  of  Mr.  De  Morgan's  two 
propositions  identifies  X  with  only  some  of  Y,  the  second  supei-adds  the 
remainder.  But  in  reality  the  two  judgments  which  go  to  the  composition 
of  "All  A  is  all  B,"  are  not  judgments  with  quantified  predicates  at  all. 
They  are,  All  A  is  B,  and  all  B  is  A.  The  one  ascribes  the  attributes  of 
B  to  every  A,  the  other  the  attributes  of  A  to  ev^ry  B.  Judgments  more 
distinct  and  independent  of  one  another  do  not  exist. 

According  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton  (Appendix  to  Lectures,  iv.  259)  "  ordi- 
"  nary  language  quantifies  the  Predicate  as  often  as  this  determination 
"  becomes  of  the  smallest  import."  And  he  cites  such  instances  as  "  Virtue 
is  the  only  nobility ;"  "  Of  animals  man  alone  is  rational,"  and  the  like. 
The  truth  is,  that  ordinary  language  quantifies  the  predicate  in  the  rare 
cases  in  which  it  is  quantified  in  thought,  and  in  no  others.  And  even 
tlien  the  quantified  proposition  is  an  abbreviated  expression  of  two  judg- 
ments. The  German  logician  Schiebler,  to  whom  our  author  refers  in  a 
foot-note  (Ibid.  p.  2t)l),  could  have  set  him  right  here. 

""Sir  W.  Hamilton,"  says  Mr.  Grote  (Westminster Review,  pp.  31,  32), 
"  insists  on  stating  explicitly,  not  merely  all  that  is  thought  implicitly, 
"  but  a  great  deal  more ;  adding  to  it  something  else,  which  may,  indeed, 
"  be  thought  conjointly,  but  which  more  frequently  is  not  thought  at  all. 
"  He  requires  us  to  pack  two  distinct  judgments  into  one  and  the  same 
"proposition:  he  interpolates  the  meaning  of  the  Propositio  Conversa 
"  si/mpliciter  into  the  form  of  the  Propositio  Couvertenda  (when  an  uni- 
"  versal  affirmative)  and  then  claims  it  as  a  great  advantage,  that  the 
"  proposition  thus  interpolated  admits  of  being  converted  simpUcitei-,  and 

"  not  merely  2Je'>'  acddens If  a  man  is  prejaared  to  give  us  informa- 

"  lion  on  one  Quaesitum,  why  should  he  be  constrained  to  use  a  mode  of 
"  speech  which  forces  on  his  attention  at  the  same  time  a  second  and  dia- 
'■  tmct  Quaesitum,  so  that  he  must  either  give  us  information  about  the  two 


IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FORMAL   LOGIC.  517 

**  Some  A  is  some  B,"  ought  in  logical  propriety  to  be 
used  and  understood  in  the  sense  of  "  some  and  some 
only^*  No  shadow  of  justification  is  shown  for  thus 
deviating  from  the  practice  of  all  writers  on  logic,  and 
of  all  who  think  and  speak  with  any  approach  to  pre- 
cision, and  adopting  into  logic  a  mere  sous-entendu  of 
common  conversation  in  its  most  unprecise  form.  If  I 
say  to  any  one,  "  I  saw  some  of  your  children  to-day," 
he  might  be  justified  in  inferring  that  I  did  not  see 
them  all,  not  because  the  words  mean  it,  but  because,  if 
I  had  seen  them  all,  it  is  most  likely  that  I  should  have 
said  so :  though  even  this  cannot  be  presumed  unless  it 
is  presupposed  that  I  must  have  known  whether  the 
children  I  saw  were  all  or  not.  But  to  carry  this  collo- 
quial mode  of  interpreting  a  statement  into  Logic,  is 
something  novel.  If  Some  A  is  B  is  to  be  understood 
of  some  onli/,  it  is  a  double  judgment,  compounded  of  the 
propositions.  Some  As  are  Bs,  and  some  As  are  not  Bs. 
If  quantified  in  our  author's  manner,  the  propositions 
would  run  thus :  Some  A  is  some  B,  and  some  (other) 
A  is  not  any  B.  If  two  statements,  one  of  which  affirms 
and  the  other  denies  a  different  predicate  of  a  different 
subject,  are  not  two  distinct  judgments,  it  is  impossible 

"  at  once,  or  confess  himself  ignorant  respecting  the  second  ?"  Mr.  Grote 
goes  on  to  cite  from  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  own  collection  of  authorities,  an 
excellent  passage  from  a  Jewish  philosopher  of  the  fourteenth  century, 
Levi  Ben  Gerson,  which  exactly  confutes  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  doctrine. 
"  The  cause  why  the  quantitative  note  is  not  usually  joined  with  the  predi- 
*'  cate,  is  that  there  would  thus  be  two  quaesita  at  once ;  to  wit,  whether  the 
"  predicate  were  affirmed  of  the  subject,  and  whether  it  were  denied  of 
"  everything  beside.  For  when  we  say,  All  Man  is  all  Rational,  we  judge 
*'  that  all  man  is  rational,  and  judge  likewise  that  rational  is  denied  ot 
"  everything  but  man.  But  these  are,  in  reality,  two  different  quaesita ; 
"  and  therefore  it  has  become  usual  to  state  them,  not  in  one,  but  in  two 
"  several  propositions.  And  this  is  self-evident,  seeing  that  a  quaBsitum 
"  in  itself,  asks  only — Does  or  does  not  this  inhere  in  that  ?  and  not,  Does 
"  or  does  not  this  inhere  in  that,  and  at  the  same  time  inhere  in  nothing 
*'  else." 

Propositions  in  Extension  have  absolutely  no  meaning  but  what  they 
derive  from  Comprehension.  The  Logic  of  the  quantified  predicate  takes 
the  Comprehension  out  of  them,  and  leaves  them  a  caput  mortuum. 

*  See,  among  many  other  places.  Discussions,  Appendix  ii.  pp.  600,  601, 
where  he  says,  "  Every  quantity  is  necessarily  either  all,  or  none,  or  iotnei 
of  these,  the  third  is  formally  exclusive  of  the  other  two." 


518  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  supposed 

to  say  what  are  so.  One  of  the  great  uses  of  discipline 
in  Formal  Logic,  is  to  make  us  aware  when  something 
which  claims  to  be  a  single  proposition,  really  consists 
of  several,  which,  not  being  necessarily  involved  one  in 
another,  require  to  be  separated,  and  considered  each  by 
itself,  before  we  admit  the  compound  assertion.  This 
separation  may  be  called,  with  reason,  stating  explicitly 
in  words  what  is  implicitly  in  thought.  But  it  is  a 
new  postulate  of  Logic  to  state  mplicitly  in  words  what 
is  explicitly  in  thought,  and  I  do  not  think  that  Logic  is 
at  all  enriched  by  the  acquisition. 

With  these  compound  propositions  falls  the  whole 
pretension  of  the  quantified  mode  of  expression  to  yield 
legitimate  inferences  which  are  not  recognised  by  the  old 
Logic.  Whatever  can  be  proved  from  "All  A  is  allB,'' 
can  be  proved  in  the  old  form  from  one  or  both  of  its 
elements,  All  As  are  Bs,  and  all  Bs  are  As.  Whatever 
can  be  proved  from  "  Some,  and  only  some,  A  is  some 
(or  all)  B,"  can  be  proved  in  the  old  form  from  its  ele- 
ments. Some  As  are  Bs,  Some  As  are  not  Bs,  and  (in 
the  case  last  mentioned)  All  Bs  are  As.  If  we  choose 
to  alter  the  forms  of  all  our  propositions,  the  forms  of 
our  syllogisms  naturally  require  alterations  too  ;  and 
there  may  be  a  greater  number  of  forms  in  which  quan- 
tified conclusions  can  be  drawn  from  quantified  premises, 
than  in  which  unquantified  conclusions  can  be  drawn 
from  unquantified  premises.  But  there  is  not  a  single 
instance,  nor  is  it  possible  in  the  nature  of  things  that 
there  should  be  an  instance,  in  which  a  conclusion  that 
is  provable  from  quantified  premises,  could  not  be  proved 
from  the  same  premises  unquantified,  if  we  set  forth  all 
those  which  are  really  involved.  If  there  could  be  such 
an  instance,  the  quantified  Syllogism  would  be  a  real 
addition  to  the  theory  of  Logic :  if  not,  not. 

As  I  have  already  once  remarked,  it  does  not  follow, 
because  the  quantified  Syllogism  is  not  a  true  expression 
of  what  is  in  thought,  that  the  occasional  writing  the 
predicate  witli  a  quantification  may  not  be  a  real  help  to 
the  art  of  Logic.     Though  not  a  correct  analysis  of  the 


IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FORMAL    LOGIC.  519 

reasoning  process,  it  may,  in  some  cases,  enable  us  more 
readily  to  see  whether  the  conclusion  really  follows  from 
the  premises.  But  without  rejecting  it  as  an  available 
help  for  this  purpose,  I  must  observe  that  its  use  in  this 
capacity  appears  to  me  extremely  limited;  for  two  reasons. 
First ;  the  problem  is,  to  test  the  validity  of  a  reasoning 
as  expressed  in  the  language  in  which  men  ordinarily 
reason.  We  do  this  by  taking  the  propositions  as  they 
are,  and  measuring  the  extent  of  the  assertions  made  in 
the  two  premises  and  in  the  conclusion  respectively,  so 
as  to  ascertain  whether  the  former  are  broad  enough  to 
cover  and  include  the  latter.  This  it  requires  some 
practice  to  do,  but  the  task  is  not  avoided  by  quantify- 
ing the  predicate ;  on  the  contrary'-,  it  must  have  been 
actually  performed  before  the  predicate  can  be  correctly 
quanfitied ;  so  that  by  quantifying  it  in  expression,  no 
trouble  is  saved.  My  second  reason  is,  that  after  the 
predicate  has  been  quantified,  it  is  often  equally  or  more 
difficult  to  follow  the  consecution  of  the  thought  through 
the  symbols,  than  as  expressed  in  ordinary  language. 
Take  one  of  the  common  cases  of  invalid  inference,  a 
syllogism  in  the  first  figure  with  the  major  premise  par- 
ticular, such  as  this  : 

Some  Ms  are  Ps 

All  Ss  are  Ms 

Therefore  all  Ss  are  Ps ; 
the  inference  fails,  because  the  Ms  which  are  identified 
with  Ss  may  not  be  the  same  Ms  which  are  Ps,  but 
other  Ms.     Let  us  now  quantify  the  predicates  thus : 

Some  Ms  are  some  Ps 

All  Ss  are  some  Ms 

Therefore  all  Ss  are  some  Ps ; 
is  the  invalidity  of  tiie  inference  at  all  clearer  ?  Does  it 
require  less  exertion  of  thought  to  perceive  that  "  some 
Ms"  may  not  mean  the  same  some  in  both  premises, 
than  it  did  to  recognise  the  equivalent  truth  as  to  M  in 
the  minor,  and  "some  M"  in  the  major  premise?  On 
the  contrary,  the  quantified  lorm  is  the  more  plausibly 
misleading  of  the  two,  since  the  middle  term,  though 


520        SUPPOSED    IMPROVEMENTS    IN    FORMAL    LOGIC. 

really  ambiguous,  is,  in  that  form,  verbally  the  same, 
which  in  the  unquantified  form  it  is  not. 

The  general  result  of  these  considerations  is,  that  the 
utility  of  the  new  forms  is  by  no  means  such  as  to  com- 
pensate for  the  great  additional  complication  which  they 
introduce  into  the  syllogistic  theory;  a  complication 
which  would  make  it  at  the  same  time  difficult  to  learn 
or  remember,  and  intolerably  tiresome  both  in  the 
learning  and  in  the  using.  The  sole  purpose  of  any 
syllogistic  forms  is  to  afford  an  available  test  for  the 
process  of  drawing  inferences  in  the  common  language 
of  life  from  premises  in  the  same  common  language ; 
and  the  ordinary  forms  of  Syllogism  effect  this  purpose 
completely.  The  new  forms  do  not,  in  any  appreciable 
degree,  facilitate  the  process,  while  they  are  chargeable, 
in  a  far  greater  degree  than  the  common  forms,  with 
diverting  the  mind  from  the  true  meaning  of  proposi- 
tions (the  ascription  of  attributes  to  objects  considered 
severally),  and  concentrating  it  upon  the  highly  arti- 
ficial, and  generally  unimportant,  consideration  of  the 
relation  of  extent  between  classes  of  objects,  considered 
not  severally,  but  as  collective  wholes.  The  new  forms 
have  thus  no  practical  advantage  which  can  countervail 
the  objection  of  their  entire  psychological  irrelevancy ; 
and  the  invention  and  acquisition  of  them  have  little 
value,  except  as  one  among  many  other  feats  of  mental 
gymnastic,  by  which  students  of  the  science  may 
exercise  and  invigorate  their  faculties.  They  should,  in 
short,  be  dealt  with  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  deals  with  Mr. 
De  Morgan's  forms  of  "  numerically  definite"  Syllogism, 
viz.  "taken  into  account  by  Logic  as  authentic  forms, 
"  but  then  relegated  as  of  little  use  in  practice,  and 
"  cumbering  the  science  with  a  superfluous  mass  of 
"  words."* 

*  Appendix  to  Lectures,  iv.  355. 


521 


CHAPTER  XXIIL 


OP    SOME    MINOR    PECULTARITIES    OF    DOCTRINE    IN    SIR 

WILLIAM  Hamilton's  view  of  formal  logic. 

The  two  theories  examined  in  the  preceding  chapter  are 
the  only  important  novelties  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
has  introduced  into  the  Science  or  Art  of  Losric.  But  he 
has  here  and  there  departed  from  the  common  doctrine 
of  logicians  on  subordinate  points.  Some  of  these  devia- 
tions deserve  notice  from  their  connexion  with  some 
principal  part  of  our  author's  doctrine,  others  chiefly  as 
throwing  light  on  the  character  of  his  mind.  The  one 
to  which  1  shall  first  advert  is  of  the  former  class. 

I.  Almost  all  writers  on  the  Syllogistic  Logic  have 
directed  attention  to  the  fact,  that  though  we  cannot, 
while  observing  the  forms  of  Logic,  draw  a  false  con- 
clusion from  true  premises,  we  may  draw  a  true  one 
from  false  premises :  in  other  words,  the  falsity  of  the 
premises  does  not  prove  the  falsity  of  the  conclusion ; 
nor  does  the  truth  of  the  conclusion  prove  the  truth  of 
the  premises.  The  warning  is  needed ;  for  it  is  by  no 
means  unusual  to  mistake  a  refutation  of  the  reasons  I'rom 
which  a  doctrine  has  been  deduced  for  a  disproof  of  the 
doctrine  itself;  and  there  is  no  error  of  thought  more 
common  than  the  acceptance  of  premises  because  they 
lead  to  a  conclusion  already  assented  to  as  true.  Not 
only  is  this  caution  useful,  but  it  is  relevant  to  Logic, 
even  in  the  restricted  point  of  view  of  Formal  Logic. 
When  it  is  affirmed  that  Formal  Logic  has  nothing  to 
do  with  Material  Truth,  all  that  ought  to  be  meant,  is 
that  in  Logic  we  are  not  to  consider  whether  the  con- 
clusion supposed  to  be  proved  is  true  in  fact.     But  we 


522        MINOR    PECULIARITIES    IN    SIR    W.    HAMILTON'S 

are  to  consider  whether  it  is  true  conditionally,  true  if 
the  premises  are  true :  that  question  is  the  specific  busi- 
ness of  Formal  Logic :  if  Formal  Logic  does  not  teach 
us  that,  there  is  nothing  for  it  to  teach.  The  theorem, 
that  in  a  valid  Syllogism  the  falsity  of  the  premises  does 
not  prove  the  falsity  of  the  conclusion,  is  as  germane  to 
Logic  as  that  the  truth  of  the  premises  proves  the  truth 
of  the  conclusion.  We  have  therefore  reason  to  be 
surprised  at  finding  Sir  W.  Hamilton  delivering  himself 
as  follows  :* — 

"  Logic  does  not  warrant  the  truth  of  its  premises, 
"  except  in  so  far  as  these  may  be  the  formal  conclusions 
"  of  anterior  reasonings ;  it  only  warrants  (on  the  hypo- 
"  thesis  that  the  premises  are  truly  assumed)  the  truth 
"  of  the  inference.  In  this  view  the  conclusion  may,  as 
"  a  separate  proposition,  be  true  ;  but  if  this  truth  be  not 
"  a  necessary  consequence  from  the  premises,  it  is  a  false 
"  conclusion,  that  is,  in  fact,  no  conclusion  at  all.  Now 
"  on  this  point  there  is  a  doctrine  prevalent  among 
"  logicians,  which  is  not  only  erroneous,  but  if  admitted, 
"  is  subversive  of  the  distinction  of  Logic  as  a  purely 
"formal  science.  The  doctrine  in  question  is  in  its 
"  result  this, — that  if  the  conclusion  of  a  syllogism  be 
"  true,  the  premises  may  be  either  true  or  false,  but 
"  that  if  the  conclusion  be  false,  one  or  both  of  its  pre- 
"  mises  must  be  Iklse  :  in  other  words,  that  it  is  possible 
"  to  infer  true  from  false,  but  not  false  from  true.  As 
*'  an  example  of  this  I  have  given  the  following  syllo- 
"  gism : — 

"  Aristotle  is  a  Eoman  ; 

"  A  Eoman  is  a  European; 

"  Therefore,  Aristotle  is  a  European. 
"  The  inference,  in  so  far  as  expressed,  is  true ;  but  I  would 
"  remark,  that  the  whole  inference  which  the  premises 
"  necessitate,  and  which  the  conclusion,  therefore,  virtually 
"  contains,  is  not  true, — is  false.  For  the  premises  of  the 
"  preceding  syllogism  gave  not  only  the  conclusion,  Aris- 
"  totle  is  a  Luropean,  but  also  the  conclusion,  Aristotle  is 
*  Lectures,  iii.  450,  451. 


VIEW    OF   FORMAL    LOGIC.  523 

"  not  a  Greek ;  for  it  not  merely  follows  from  the  pre- 
"  mises,  that  Aristotle  is  conceived  under  the  universal 
"  notion  of"  which  the  concept  Roman  forms  a  particular 
"  sphere,  but  likewise  that  he  is  conceived  as  excluded 
"  from  all  the  other  particular  spheres  which  are  contained 
"  under  that  universal  notion.  The  consideration  of  the 
"  truth  of  the  premise,  Aristotle  is  a  Roman  is,  however, 
**  more  properly  to  be  regarded  as  extralogica. ;  but  if  so, 
"  then  the  consideration  of  the  conclusion,  Aristotle  is  a 
"  European,  on  any  other  view  than  as  a  mere  formal 
"  inference  from  certain  hypothetical  antecedents,  is  like- 
**  wise  extralogical.  Logic  is  only  concerned  with  the 
"  formal  truth, — the  technical  validity, — of  its  syllogisms, 
"  and  anything  beyond  the  legfitimacy  of  the  consequence 
**  it  draws  from  certain  hypothetical  antecedents,  it  does 
"  not  profess  to  vindicate.  Logical  truth  and  falsehood 
"  are  thus  contained  in  the  correctness  and  incorrectness 
"  of  logical  inference ;  and  it  was,  therefore,  with  no  im- 
"  propriety  that  we  made  a  true  or  correct,  and  a  false  or 
"  incorrect,  syllogism  convertible  expressions." 

The  statement  that  a  true  proposition  may  be  cor- 
rectly inferred  from  false  premises,  or  in  other  words, 
that  a  true  opinion  may  be  supported  by  false  reasons, 
is  one  of  which  we  could  hardly  have  expected  to  tind 
the  truth  disputed,  whatever  might  be  said  of  the  con- 
nexion of  Logic  with  it.  So  unlooked-for  a  paradox 
required  to  be  defended  by  the  strongest  arguments  : 
who,  then,  would  expect  such  shabby,  not  arguments, 
but  hints  of  arguments,  as  the  author  presents  us  with  ? 
He  stops  short  in  the  middle  of  the  lirst,  as  if  airaid  that 
it  would  break  down  if  relied  upon,  and  hurries  to  the 
second,  which  is  still  more  incapable  of  bearing  weight. 
"  The  consideration  of  the  conclusion,  Aristotle  is  a  Euro- 
" pean,  on  any  other  view  than  as  a  mere  formal  inference 
"  from  certain  hypothetical  antecedents,  is  extralogical." 
Nobody  proposes  to  consider  it  as  anything  but  a  formal 
inference  from  certain  hypothetical  antecedents.  The 
gist  of  the  whole  question  is  that  it  is  such  an  inference, 
and  consequently  that  a  proposition  really  true,  may  be 


524        MINOR  PECULIARITIES   IN    SIR    W.    HAMILTON'S 

a  formal  inference  from  premises  wholly  or  partially 
false :  in  other  words,  the  falsity  of  the  conclusion  does 
not  follow  from  the  falsity  of  the  premises.  It  is  as 
much  the  business  of  the  theory  of  "  formal  inference" 
to  show  what  conclusions  are  not  formally  legitimate,  as 
what  are.  It  is  not  the  business  of  Formal  Logic  to 
determine  what  is  actually  true,  but  it  is,  to  tell  what 
does  or  does  not  follow  from  what.  In  the  first  un- 
finished part  of  his  argument,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  makes  a 
iaint  attempt  to  show  that  the  conclusion,  Aristotle  is  a 
European,  is  not  true.  He  admits  it  to  be  true  as  tar  as 
expressed,  but  sa}'s  that  it  virtually  contains  something 
which  is  false,  namely,  that  Aristotle  is  not  a  Greek. 
By  what  analysis  can  he  find  this  in  the  proposition, 
Aristotle  is  a  European?  He  does  not  pretend  that  it 
is  in  the  proposition  considered  in  itself,  but  only  in  the 
proposition  as  inferred  Irom  "  Aristotle  is  a  Koman." 
But  it  is  a  strange  doctrine  that  a  proposition  is  true  or 
false  not  according  to  what  it  asserts,  but  according  to 
the  mode  in  which  the  belief  of  it  has  been  arrived  at. 
It  is  a  very  irrational  mode  of  speaking  to  say  that  a 
proposition,  besides  its  obvious  meaning,  contains  a 
meaning  which  the  words  do  not  convey,  which  in  the 
mouths  of  other  people  it  does  not  bear,  but  which  is  so 
essential  a  part  of  it  as  by  its  falsity  to  make  the  pro- 
position false  which  otherwise  would  be  true.  Suppose 
that  the  register  of  a  man's  birth  having  been  destroyed, 
some  one  to  whom  the  date  is  of  importance,  proves  it 
by  a  false  entry  in  the  parish  books :  would  that  make 
the  man  not  to  have  been  born  on  the  day  he  was  born 
on  ?  But  let  us  concede  this  point,  however  unreason- 
able, and  admit  that  the  proposition  Aristotle  is  a 
European,  when  inferred  from  the  premise  that  he  is  a 
Roman,  includes  that  premise  as  part  of  its  own  mean- 
ing. Does  it  therefore  contain  an  implication  that  he 
is -not  a  Greek?  Suppose  that  I  have  never  heard  of 
Greeks ;  or  that,  having  heard  of  them,  I  suppose  a 
Greek  to  be  a  kind  of  Koman,  or  a  Boman  a  kind  of 
Greek,     ^'ill  this  ignorance  or  misapprehension  on  my 


VIEW    OF    FORMAL    LOGIC.  525 

part,  prevent  me  from  concluding,  that  if  a  Eoman  is 
a  European  and  Aristotle  a  Roman,  Aristotle  must  be  a 
European ;  or  will  it  make  the  inference  illegitimate,  or 
the  conclusion  false?  One  sentence  in  our  quotation 
from  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  a  singular  illustration  of  the 
length  he  will  go  to  support  a  favourite  thesis.  "  The 
"premises,"  he  says,  "  of  the  ^syllogistn  gave  not  only  the 
"  conclusion,  Aristotle  is  a  European,  but  also  the  con- 
"  elusion,  Aristotle  is  not  a  Greek."     Let  us  try : — 

Aristotle  is  a  Roman ; 

A  Roman  is  a  European ; 

Therefore,  Aristotle  is  not  a  Greek. 
This  is  Formal  Logic.  This  is  the  philosopher  who 
is  so  rigidly  bent  upon  excluding  from  Logic  all  con- 
sideration of  what  is  true  or  false  vi  materia.  What 
shadow  of  connexion  is  there,  unless  it  be  vi  materia,  be- 
tween this  conclusion,  and  those  premises?  Nothing 
can  explain  this  aberration  in  a  thinker  of  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton's acuteness,  except  his  dogged  determination  in  no 
shape  to  recognise  belief  as  an  element  of  judgment,  or 
truth  as  in  any  way  concerned  in  Pure  Logic. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  a  salvo  for  all  this,  though  it  is 
one  which  would  not  occur  to  everybody.  According  to 
him  there  are  two  kinds  of  truth,  or  rather  the  word 
truth  has  two  meanings,  so  that  it  is  possible  for  a  pro- 
position to  be  true  althon<rh  it  is  false.  There  is  Formal 
Truth,  and  Real  Truth.*  Real  Truth  is  "the  har- 
mony between  a  thought  and  its  matter."  Formal 
Truth  is  of  two  kinds,  Logical,  and  Mathematical. 
Logical  Truth  is  the  "  harmony  or  agreement  of  oar 
"  thoughts  with  themselves  as  thoughts,  in  other  words 
"  the  correspondence  of  thought  with  the  universal  laws 
*'  of  thinking."  And  Mathematical  Trutii  is  some  other 
harmony  of  thought,  in  which  truth  of  fact  is  equally  dis- 
pensed with.  In  another  place,  he  saysf  that  if  the  con- 
sequent is  correctly  "  evolved  out  of"  the  antecedent,  the 
conclusion  out  of  the  premises,  this  is  *'  Logical  or  Formal 
"  or  Subjective  truth :    and  an  inference  may  be  sub- 

*  Lectures,  iv.  64-ti8.  t  Ibid.  ii.  343. 


526        MINOR    PECULIARITIES    IN    SIR    W.    HAMILTON'S 

*' jectively  or  formally  true,  which  is  objectively  or  really 

"  false."    To  support  his  denial  of  the  common  doctrine, 

he  has  to  alter  the  meaning  of  words,  and  make  false  in 

the   new   meaning  what  cannot  be  denied  to  be  true 

\j  in  the  old.     But  T  object  in  tofo  to  such  an  abuse  of 

terms  as  affirming  a  false  proposition  to  be  true,  because 

it  is  in  such  a  relation  to  another  false  proposition,  that 

if  that  false  proposition  had  been  true  it  would  have  been 

true  likewise.     There  is  no  fitness  in  the  word  truth,  to 

I  express  this  mere  relation  of  consecution  between  false 

y  propositions.     No   qualification   by   adjectives,   whether 

'   ''logical,"  or  "formal,"  or  "subjective,"  will  make  this 

assertion  anything  but  a  solecism  in  language,  claiming 

to  be  the  correction  of  a  philosophical  doctrine. 

The  whole  theory  of  the  difference  between  Formal 
and  Real  Truth  is  treated  as  it  deserves,  in  a  passage  from 
one  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  favourite  authorities,  Esser, 
which  he  quotes,  and,  strange  to  say,  quotes  with  appro- 
bation. 

"  One  party  of  philosophers,"  says  Esser,*  "  defining 
*' truth  in  general,  the  absolute  harmony  of  our  thoughts 
"  and  cognitions, — divide  truth  into  a  formal  or  logical, 
"  and  into  a  material  or  metaphysical,  according  as  that 
"  harmony  is  in  consonance  with  the  laws  of  formal 
"thought,  or  over  and  above,  with  the  laws  of  real 
"  knowledge.  The  criterion  of  formal  truth  they  place 
"in  the  principles  of  Contradiction  and  of  Sufficient 
"  Reason,  enouncing  that  what  is  non-contradictory 
"  and  consequent  is  formally  true.  This  criterion,  which 
"  is  positive  and  immediate  of  formal  truth  (inasmuch  as 
"  what  is  non-contradictory  and  consequent  can  always 
"be  thought  as  possible),  they  style  a  negative  and 
"  mediate  criterion  of  material  truth :  as  what  is  self- 
"  contradictory  and  logically  inconsequent  is  in  reality 
"  impossible ;  at  the  same  time,  what  is  not  self-contra- 
"  dictory  and  not  logically  inconsequent,  is  not,  however, 
"  to  be  regarded  as  having  an  actual  existence.  But 
"  here  the  foundation  is  treacherous  :  the  notion  of  truth 

♦  Lectures,  iii.  106, 107. 


VIEW   OP   rORMAL   LOGIC.  527 

"is  false.  When  we  speak  of  truth,  we  are  not  satisfied 
"  with  knowing  that  a  thought  harmonizes  with  a  certain 
"system  of  thoughts  and  cognitions;  but,  over  and 
"  above,  we  require  to  be  assured  that  what  we  think  is 
"real,  and  is  as  we  think  it  to  be.  Are  we  satisfied 
"  on  this  point,  we  then  regard  our  thoughts  as  true ; 
"  whereas  if  we  are  not  satisfied  of  this,  we  deem  them 
"false,  how  well  soever  they  may  quadrate  with  any 
"theory  or  system.  It  is  not,  therefore,  in  any  absolute 
"harmony  of  mere  thought,  that  truth  consists,  but 
"  solely  in  the  correspondence  of  our  thoughts  with  their 
"  objects.  The  distinction  of  formal  and  material  truth 
"  is  thus  not  only  unsound  in  itself,  but  opposed  to  the 
"  notion  of  truth  universally  held,  and  embodied  in  all 
"languages.  But  if  this  distinction  be  inept,  the  title 
"  of  Logic,  as  a  positive  standard  of  truth,  must  be  de- 
"  nied ;  it  can  only  be  a  negative  criterion,  being  con- 
"  versant  with  thoughts  and  not  with  things,  with  the 
"possibility  and  not  with  the  actuality  of  existence." 

After  all  the  experience  we  have  had  of  the  facility 
with  wliich  Sir  W.  Hamilton  forgets  in  one  part  of  his 
speculations  what  he  has  thought  in  another,  it  remains 
scarcely  credible  that  he  endorses,  in  his  third  volume, 
this  emphatic  protest  against  the  distinction  which  he 
draws,  and  the  opinion  whicii  he  maintains,  in  his 
second  and  fourth.  "  Two  opposite  doctrines,"  he  says,* 
"  have  sprung  up,  which,  on  opposite  sides,  have  over- 
"  looked  the  true  relations  of  Logic ;"  and  one  of  these  is 
the  doctrine  (the  "  inaccuracy"  our  author  styles  it)  which 
Esser,  in  this  passage,  protests  against.  And  he  there- 
upon quotes  Esser's  condemnation  of  his  (Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton's) own  doctrine.  Truly,  if  arguments  ad  hominem 
were  sufficient,  a  controversialist  who  undertakes  to 
refute  Sir  W.  Hamilton  would  have  an  easy  task. 

II.  I  have  already  noticed  one  unacknowledged  depar- 
ture by  our  author  from  the  usage  of  Logicians  as 
regards  the  sense  of  the  word  Disjunctive;  confining 
Disjunctive  judgments  to  those  in  which  all  the  alterna- 

*  Lectures,  iii.  106. 


528        MINOR    PECULIARITIES    IN    SIR    W.    HAMILTON'S 

tive  propositions  have  the  same  subject :  A  is  either  B, 
or  C,  or  D.  This  limitation  excludes  two  other  forms  of 
the  assertion  of  an  alternative :  that  in  which  the  pro- 
positions have  different  subjects  but  the  same  predicate, 
"  Either  A,  or  B,  or  C,  is  D ;"  and  that  in  which  they 
have  different  subjects  and  different  predicates,  *'  Either 
A  is  B,  or  C  is  D."  The  former  is  exemplified  in  such 
judgments  as  these,  Either  Brown  or  Smith  did  this  act ; 
Either  John  or  Thomas  is  dead.  The  latter  in  such  as 
these:  Either  the  witness  has  told  a  falsehood,  or  the 
prisoner  has  committed  a  murder;  Either  Macbeth  has 
killed  all  Macduff's  children,  or  Macduff  has  children 
who  were  not  there  present.  While  arbitrarily  excluding 
both  these  kinds  of  assertion  from  the  class  and  denomi- 
nation in  which  they  had  always  been  placed,  our  author 
does  not  assign  to  them  any  other ;  so  that  the  effect  is 
not  a  mere  innovation  in  language,  but  a  hiatus  in  his 
logical  system;  these  two  kinds  of  judgment  having  no 
])lace.  name,  or  recognition  in  it.  1  have  now  to  point 
out  a  second  deviation  from  the  received  doctrine  of 
logicians  in  connexion  with  the  same  subject.  In  respect 
to  the  class  of  judgments  to  which  he  restricts  the  name 
of  Disjunctive,  those  in  which  two  or  more  predicates 
are  disjunctively  affirmed  of  the  same  subject,  he  takes 
for  granted  through  the  whole  of  his  exposition,*  that 
when  we  say,  A  is  either  B  or  C,  we  imply  that  it  can- 
not be  both :  that  we  may  as  legitimately  argue,  A  is 
either  B  or  C,  hut  it  is  B,  therefore  it  is  not  C,  as  we 
may  argue,  A  is  either  B  or  C,  but  it  is  not  B,  there- 
fore it  is  C.  This  is  what  enables  him  to  affirm,  as  he 
does,  that  the  principle  of  Disjunctive  Judgments  is  the 
Law  of  Excluded  Middle.  The  predicates  are  supposed  to 
be  either  explicitly  or  implicitly  contradictory,  so  that  one 
or  other  of  them  must  be  true  of  the  subject,  but  both 
of  them  cannot.  I  conceive  this  to  be  both  an  incom- 
pleteness in  his  theory,  and  a  positive  error  in  fact.  An 
incompleteness,  because  we  may  judge,  and  legitimately 
judge,  that  a  thing  is  either  this  or  that,  though  aware 

*  Lectures,  iii.  326,  et  seqq. 


VIEW    OP    FORMAL    LOGIC.  529 

that  it  may  possibly  be  both.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  so 
severe  on  the  ordinary  Logic  for  omitting,  as  he  thinks, 
some  valid  forms  of  thought,  that  it  was  peculiarly 
incumbent  on  him  not  to  commit  a  similar  oversiijht  in 
his  own  exposition  of  the  science.  But  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton does  not  merely  leave  unrecognised  those  disjunc- 
tive judgments  in  which  the  alternative  predicate?  are 
mutually  compatible ;  he  assumes  that  the  disjunctive 
form  of  jissertion  denies  their  compatibility,  which  it 
assuredly  does  not.  If  we  assert  that  a  man  who  has 
acted  in  some  particular  way,  must  be  either  a  knave  or 
a  fool,  we  by  no  means  assert,  or  intend  to  assert,  that 
he  cannot  be  both.  Very  important  consequences  may 
sometimes  be  drawn  from  our  knowledge  that  one  or 
other  of  two  perfectly  compatible  suppositions  must  be 
true.  Suppose  such  an  argument  as  this.  To  make  an 
entirely  unselfish  use  of  despotic  power  a  man  must  be 
either  a  saint  or  a  philosopher;  but  saints  and  philosophers 
are  rare ;  therefore  those  are  rare,  who  make  an  entirely 
unselfish  use  of  despotic  power.  The  conclusion  follows 
from  the  premises,  and  is  of  great  practical  importance. 
But  does  the  disjunctive  premise  necessarily  imply,  or 
must  it  be  construed  as  supposing,  that  the  same  person 
cannot  be  both  a  saint  and  a  philosopher?  Such  a  con- 
struction would  be  ridiculous.* 

There  is  a  great  quantity  of  intricate  and  obscure 
speculation,  in  our  author's  Lectures  and  their  Appen- 
dices, relating  to  Disjunctive  and  Hypothetical  Proposi- 
tions. But,  much  as  he  had  thought  on  the  subject,  the 
simple  idea  never  seems  to  have  occurred  to  him  (though 
he  might  have  found  it  in  Archbishop  VVhately's  Logic), 
that  every  disjunctive  judgment  is  compounded  of  two  or 
more  Hypothetical  ones.  "  Either  A  is  B,  or  C  is  P," 
means.  If  A  is  not  B,  C  is  D;  and  if  0  is  not  D,  A  is 
B.  This  is  obvious  enough  to  most  people ;  but  if  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  had  thought  of  it,  he  probably  would 
have  denied  it :  its  admission  .would  not  have  been  in 

*  Mr.  Mansel  does  not  fall  into  this  mistake  (Prolegomena  Logica, 
p.  221). 

M  M 


530         MINOR    PECULIARITIES   IN    SIR   W.    HAMILTON'S 

keeping  witli  the  disposition  he  shows  in  so  many  places, 
to  consider  as  one  judgment  all  that  it  is  possible  to 
assert  in  one  formula.  Again,  though  he  takes  much 
pains  to  determine  what  is  the  real  import  of  a  Hypo- 
thetical Judgment,  the  thought  never  occurs  to  him  that 
it  is  a  judgment  concerning  judgments.  If  A  is  B,  C 
is  D,  means,  The  judgment  C  is  D  follows  as  a  conse- 
quence from  the  judgment  A  is  B.  Not  seeing  this,  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  tacitly  adopts  the  assertion  of  Krug,  that 
the  conversion  of  a  hypothetical  syllogism  into  a  cate- 
gorical "  is  not  always  possible."* 

III.  The  next  of  Sir  W,  Hamilton's  minor  innova- 
tions in  Logic  has  reference  to  the  Sorites.  It  is  scarcely 
necessary  to  say,  that  a  Sorites  is  an  argument  in  the 
form,  A  is  B,  B  is  C,  C  is  D,  D  is  E,  therefore  A  is  E  : 
an  abridged  expression  for  a  series  of  Syllogisms,  but  not 
requiring  to  be  decomposed  into  them  in  order  to  make 
its  conclusiveness  visible.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  accuses  all 
writers  on  Logic  of  having  overlooked  the  possibility  of 
a  Sorites  in  the  second  or  third  Figure.f  By  this  he 
does  not  mean,  one  in  which  the  ultimate  syllogism, 
which  suras  up  the  argument,  is  in  the  second  or  third 
figure,  lor  this  all  logicians  have  admitted.  For  example, 
to  the  Sorites  given  above,  there  might  be  added  the 
proposition,  No  F  is  E ;  in  which  case,  the  ultimate 
syllogism  would  be,  A  is  E,  but  no  F  is  E,  therefore  A 
is  not  an  F  :  a  syllogism  in  the  second  figure.  Or  there 
might  be  added,  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  series,  A  is 
Ct  ;  when  the  ultimate  syllogism  would  be  in  the  third 
figure ;  A  is  E,  but  A  is  Gr,  therefore  some  G  is  an  E. 
These  are  real  Sorites,  real  chain  arguments,  and  they 
conclude  in  the  second  and  third  figures  :  we  may  call 
them,  if  we  please.  Sorites  in  the  second  and  in  the  third 
figure,  the  truth  being  that  they  are  Sorites  in  which 
one  of  the  steps  is  in  the  second  or  third  figure,  all  the 
others  being  in  the  first.  And  every  one  who  under- 
stands the  laws  of  the  second  and  third  figures  (or  even 
tlie  general  laws  of  the  Syllogism)  can  see  that  no  more 

*  Lectures,  iii.  342.  f  Ibid.  Appendix  to  Lectures,  iv.  395. 


VIEW    OF    FORMAL    LOGIC.  531 

tlian  one  step  in  either  of  them  is  admissible  in  a  Sorites, 
and  tliat  it  must  either  be  the  first  or  the  last.  About 
this,  however,  Logicians  have  always  been  agreed.  These 
are  not  the  kinds  of  Sorites  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  con- 
tends for.  By  a  Sorites  in  the  second  or  third  fio-ure, 
he  means  one  in  which  all  the  steps  are  in  the  second, 
or  all  in  the  third,  figure  (a  thing  impossible  in  a  real 
Sorites)  and  in  which,  accordingly,  instead  of  a  succession 
of  middle  terms  establishing  a  connexion  between  the  two 
extremes,  there  is  but  one  middle  term  altogether.  His 
paradigm  in  the  second  figure  would  be,  No  B  is  A,  No  C 
is  A,  No  D  is  A,  No  E  is  A,  All  F  is  A,  therefore  no  B, 
or  C,  or  D,  or  E,  is  F.  In  the  third  figure,  it  would  be, 
A  is  B,  A  is  C,  A  is  D,  A  is  E,  A  is  F,  therefore  some 
B,  and  C,  and  D,  and  E,  are  F.  One  would  have  thought 
that  anybody  who  had  the  smallest  notion  of  the  mean- 
ing of  a  Sorites,  must  have  seen  that  either  of  these  is 
not  a  Sorites  at  all.  It  is  not  a  chain  argument.  It 
does  not  ascend  to  a  conclusion  by  a  series  of  steps,  each 
introducing  a  new  premise.  It  does  not  deduce  one  con- 
clusion from  a  succession  of  premises,  all  necessary  to 
its  establishment.  It  draws  as  many  different  conclu- 
sions as  there  are  syllogisms,  each  conclusion  depending 
only  on  the  two  premises  of  one  syllogism.  That  no  B 
is  ¥,  follows  from  no  B  is  A,  and  All  F  is  A ;  not  from 
those  premises  combined  with  No  C  is  A,  No  D  is  A, 
No  E  is  A.  That  some  B  is  F,  follows  from  A  is  B 
and  A  is  F ;  and  would  be  proved,  though  all  the  other 
premises  of  the  pretended  Sorites  were  rejected.  If  Sir 
W,  Hamilton  had  found  in  any  other  writer  such  a  mis- 
use of  logical  language  as  he  is  here  guilty  of,  he  would 
have  roundly  accused  him  of  total  ignorance  of  logical 
writers.  Since  it  cannot  be  imputed  to  any  such  cause 
in  himself,  I  can  only  ascribe  it  to  the  passion  which 
appears  to  have  seized  him,  in  the  later  years  of  his  life, 
ior  finding  more  and  more  new  discoveries  to  be  made 
in  Syllogistic  Logic.  If  he  had  transported  his  ardour 
for  originality  into  the  other  departments  of  the  science, 
in  which  there  was  so  great  an  unexhausted  field  for  dis- 

M  M  2 


532         MINOR    PECULIARITIES    IN   SIR    W.    HAMILTON'S 

covery,  he  might  have  enlarged  the  hounds  of  philosophy 
to  a  much  greater  extent,  than  I  am  afraid  he  will  now 
be  found  to  have  done. 

IV.  I  next  turn  to  a  singular  misapplication  of  logical 
language,  in  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  departs  from  all 
good  authorities,  and  misses  one  of  the  most  important 
distinctions  drawn  by  the  Aristotelian  logic.  I  refer 
to  his  use  of  the  word  Contrary.  He  confounds  con- 
trariety with  simple  incompatibility.  "  Opposition  of 
"  Notions,"  he  says,*  "  is  twofold :  1°.  Innnediate  or 
"  Contradictory  Opposition,  called  likewise  Repugnance  {to 

"  avTKpariKtoQ  avTiKtiaBai,avTi<paaiq,  oppOSttlO  im7nmediata,SYVQ 

"  contradict oria,  repugnantia) ;  and  2°.  Mediate  or  Con- 
"  trary  Opposition  {to  tvavTiiOQ  avTiKeladai  IvavTioTr^g,  oppo- 
''  sitio  media  vel  contraria).  The  former  emerges,  when 
"  one  concept  abolishes  {toUit)  directly  or  by  simple  ne- 
"gation,  what  another  establishes,  ponit ;  the  latter, 
"  when  one  concept  does  this  not  directly  or  by  simple 
"  negation,  but  through  the  affirmation  of  something 
"else." 

The  exemplification  and  illustration  of  thisf  is  not 
of  our  author's  devising,  but  is  a  citation  from  Krug, 
who  had  preceded  him  in  the  error.  "  To  speak  now  of 
"  the  distinction  of  Contradictory  and  Contrary  Opposi- 
*'  tion,  or  of  Contradiction  and  Contrariety ;  of  these 
"  the  former.  Contradiction,  is  exemplified  in  the  oppo- 
"  sites, — yellow,  not  yellow ;  walking,  not  walking.  Here 
"each  notion  is  directly,  immediately,  and  absolutely, 
"  repugnant  to  the  other, — they  are  reciprocal  negatives. 
"  This  opposition  is,  therefore,  properly  called  that  of 
"  Contradiction  or  of  Repugnance ;  and  the  opposing  no- 
"  tions  themselves  are  contradictory  or  repugnant  notions, 
"  in  a  single  word,  contradictories.  The  latter,  or  Con- 
"  trary  Opposition,  is  exemplified  in  the  0])\)(:i^\te», yellow, 
"  blue,  red,  &c.,  walking,  standing,  lying,  &c." 

It  can  hardly  have  been  imagined  by  Krug  or  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  that   this  is   the  meaning  of  Contrariety  in 
common  discourse,  or  that  any  one  ever  speaks  of  yellow 
•  Lectures,  iii.  213,  214.  f  I^id.  pp.  214,  215. 


VIEW    OF    FORMAL    LOGIC.  533 

or  blue  as  the  contrary  of  red,  or  even  as  the  opposite  of 
it.  The  very  phrase,  ''the  contrary,"  testifies  that  a  thing 
cannot  have  more  contraries  than  one.  J^lack  is  regarded 
as  the  contrary  of  white,  but  no  other  contrariety  is  re- 
cognised among  colours  at  all.  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  versed 
as  he  was  in  the  literature  of  logic,  can  hardlj'^  have 
fancied  that  the  world  of  logicians,  any  more  than  the 
common  world,  was  on  his  side.  In  the  language  of 
logicians,  as  in  that  of  life,  a  thing  has  only  one  contrary 
— its  extreme  opposite ;  the  thing  farthest  removed  from 
it  in  the  same  class.  Black  is  the  contrary  of  white, 
but  neither  of  them  is  the  contrary  of  red.  Infinitely 
great  is  the  contrary  of  infinitely  small,  but  is  not  the 
contrary  of  finite.  It  is  the  more  strange  that  Krug 
and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  should  have  misunderstood  or  re- 
jected this,  as  the  definition  they  ignore  is  the  Ibuudation 
of  the  distinction  between  Contradictory  and  Contrary 
Propositions,  in  the  famous  Parallelogram  of  Opposition. 
The  contrary  proposition  to  All  A  is  B,  is  No  A  is  B, 
its  extreme  opposite ;  the  assertion  most  widely  differing 
from  it  that  can  be  made ;  denying,  not  it  merely,  but 
every  part  of  it.  Its  contradictory  is  merely,  Some  A 
is  not  B.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  could  not  have  imagined  the 
distinction  between  these  negative  propositions  to  be,  that 
the  one  denies  by  smiple  negation,  the  other  through  the 
affirmation  of  something  else. 

That  the  teachers  of  the  Syllogistic  Logic  have  taken 
this  view,  and  not  Sir  W.  Hamilton's,  of  the  meaning  of 
Contrariety,  might  be  shown  by  any  number  of  quota- 
tions. 1  have  only  looked  up  the  authorities  nearest  at 
hand.     I  begin  with  Aristotle  :  Ta  yap  irXtlaTov  aXXrjXwi' 

BieoTTiKOTa  TU}V  tv  TU)  avTti)  "^kvH,  kvavr'ia  opiCovrai. 

Aristotle  again  :  Ta  -yap  evavria  TU)V  irXhiarov  Sta^fpoirwi' 
ir£/ot  TO  auTO.f 

Aristotle   iv   tw    Sekotw    rm  OtoXoyiKriq   irpayfiaTitaQ,    as 

cited  by  Ammonius  Hermiaj  :|    ETret  Ss  ^ia<pipiiv  iv^iy^trai 

*  Categoriae,  cap.  6.  f  lltpl  'Epfirfixias,  cap.  14. 

X  Ammonii  Hermiae  in  Aristotelis  de  laterpretatione  Librum  Com- 
meatarias,  ed.  Aldi,  pp.  175,  176. 


534        MINOR    PECULIARITIES    IN    SIR    W.    HAMILTON'S 

aXXrjXoii'  Tci  Sia^fpoira  ttXhov  Kai  BXarTOV,  fo-rt  rig,  Kat  fii.yiaTJ\ 
ciacpopa,  Kai  TavTtjv  Xtyo)  ivavTiwcriv. 

Ammonius  himself  thereon :  'H  riov  tvavrlow  ^tatpopa 
/xeyiaTT)  tCjv  aWwv,  Kai  ovBev  e-yovaa  e^ioTspu)  avr-qg  cvvafxevov 
ireaeiv. 

My  next  extract  shall  be  from  a  well-known  treatise, 
which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  particularly  recommended  to  his 
pupils  :   Burgersdyk's  Institutiones  Logicse. 

"  Oppositorum  species  sunt  quinque  :  Disparata,  con- 
"  traria,  relative  opposita,  privative  opposita,  et  contra- 
"  dictoria. 

"  Disparata  sunt,  quorum  unum  pluribus  opponitur, 
"  eodem  modo.  Sic  homo  et  equus,  album  et  cseruleum, 
"  sunt  disparata  :  quia  homo  non  equo  solum,  sed  etiam 
"  cani,  leoni,  cseterisque  bestiarum  speciebus,  et  album, 
"  non  solum  cseruleo,  sed  etiam  rubro,  viridi,  caiterisque 
"  coloribus  mediis,  opponitur  eodein  modo,  hoc  est,  eodem 
"  oppositorum  genere  .... 

"  Contraria  sunt  duo  absolute,  quae  sub  eodem  genere 
"  plurimum  distant.""^ 

This  passage  informs  us,  not  only  that  what  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  terms  Contraries  were  not  so  called  by  the 
Aristotelian  logicians,  but  also  what  they  w^ere  called. 
They  were  called  Disparates  :  a  term  employed  by  Sir 
W.  Hamilton,  but  in  a  totally  different  meaning. f 

The  next  is  from  one  of  the  ablest,  and,  though  in  a 
comparatively  small  compass,  one  of  the  completest  in 
essentials,  of  all  the  expositions  I  have  seen  of  Logic  • 
from  the  purely  Aristotelian  point  of  view  :  Manuductio 
ad  Logicam,  by  the  Pere  Du  Trieu,  of  Douai.  % 

"  Contraria  sunt,  quaj  posita  sub  eodem  genere  maxime 
"  a  se  invicem  distant,  eidem  subjecto  susceptivo  vicis- 
"  sim  insunt,  a  quo  se  mutuo  expellunt,  nisi  alterum 
"  insit  a  natura ;  ut,  album,  et  nigrum. 

"  In  hac  definitione  continentur  quatuor  conditiones, 
"  sive  leges  contrariorum. 

*'  Prima,  ut  sint  sub  eodem  genere.  .  .  . 

*  Burgersdicii  Institutiones  Logicae,  lib.  i.  cap.  22 ;  Theorema  i. 
t  Lectures,  iii.  224.  %  Pars  Tertia,  cap  iii.  art.  1. 


VIEW   OV   FORMAL    LOGIC.  535 

"  Secunda  conditio  contrariorum  est  ut  sub  illo  eodem 
"  gen  ere  maxime  distent,  id  est  precise  repugnent.  .  .  . 
"  Hinc  excluduntur  disparata." 

The  next  is  from  Saunderson's  Logicse  Artis  Compen- 
dium, one  of  the  best-known  elementary  treatises  on 
Logic  by  British  authors.* 

"Oppositio  Contraria  est  inter  terminos  contrarios. 
"  Sunt  autem  ea  contraria  quae  posita  sub  eodem  genere 
**  maxime  inter  se  distant,  et  vim  habent  expellendi  se 
"  vicissim  ex  eodem  subjecto  susceptibili." 

Crackanthorp  :f  "  Contraria  sunt  Opposita  quorum 
"  unum  alteri  sic  opponitur  ut  nulli  alteri  aut  seque 
**  aut  magis  opponatur.  Sic  Albedo  Nigredini,  Homini 
"  Brutum,  Rationale  Irrationali  contrariam  est.  Nam 
"  nihil  est  quod  seque  Albedini  opponitur  atque  Nigredo, 
"  et  sic  in  reliquis."  On  the  other  hand,  "  Disparata 
"  sunt  Opposita  quorum  unum  uni  sic  opponitur,  ut  alteri 
"  vel  seque  vel  magis  opponatur.  Sic  Liberalitas  et  Ava- 
"  ritia  disparata  sunt.  Nam  Avaritia  magis  opponitur 
"  Prodigalitati  quara  Liberalitati.  Sic  Albedo  et  Rubedo 
"  disparata  sunt,  quia  Albedo  seque  opponitur  Viriditati 
"  atque  Rubedini,  et  magis  Nigredini  quam  ambobus. 
"  Nam  plus  inter  se  semper  distant  extrema,  quam  vel 
"  media  inter  se,  vel  medium  ab  alterutro  extremo.'* 

Brerewoodij  "Contraria  a  Dialecticis  ita  definiri 
"  Solent :  Sunt  Opposita  quae  sub  eodem  genere  posita 
"  maxime  a  se  invicem  distant,  et  eodem  subjecto  sus- 
"  ceptibili  vicissim  insunt,  a  quo  se  mutuo  expellunt, 

"  nisi  alterum  insit  a  natura Sed  quoniam  htec 

"  definitio  (quamvis  sit  prsecipue  in  Dialecticorum  scholis 
"  authoritans)  laborat  et  ta3dio,  et  summa  difficultate, 
"  placet  ex  Aristotele  faciliorem  adducere,  et  breviorem  : 
"  Contraria  sunt  qucB  sub  eodem  genere  posita,  maxime 
*'  distant." 

Samuel   Smith  :§    "Contraria   sunt   quae  sub   eodem 

*  Pars  Prima,  cap.  15.  f  Logica,  cap.  20. 

X  Tractatas  Quidam  Logici  de  Praedicabilibus  et  Praedicamentis.  Tracta- 
tu8  Decimus,  de  Post- Praedicamentis,  Sect.  6  et  6. 
§  Aditus  ad  Logicam,  (Oxoniae,  1656)  lib.  i.  cap.  14. 


536         MINOR   PECULIARITIES    IN    SIR    W.    HAMILTON'S 

"  genere  posita,  maxime  a  se  invicem  distant,  et  eidem 
"  susceptibili  vicissim  insunt,  a  quo  se  mutuo  expellunt, 
"  nisi  alteram  eorum  insit  a  natura.  Ad  Contraria  igitur 
"  tria  requiruntur :  primo  ut  sint  sub  eodem  genere, 
"  scilicet  Qualitatis  :  nam  solarum  qualitatum  est  con- 
"  trarietas ;  secundo,  ut  maxime  a  se  invicem  distent  in 
"  natura  positiva,  id  est,  ut  ambo  extrema  sint  posi- 
•'  tiva." 

Wallis  :*  "  Contraria  definiri  solent,  quae  sub  eodem 
"  genere  maxime  distant.  Ut  calidura  et  frigidum,  album 
*'  et  nigrum  :  quse  contrarise  qualitatis  dici  solent." 

Even  Aldrich,  right  for  once,  may  be  added  to  the 
list  of  Oxford  authorities. f  "Contraria  sub  eodem 
"  genere  maxime  distant.  Non  maxime  distant  omnium; 
"■  magis  enim  distant  quae  nee  idem  genus  summum 
"  habent,  magis  Contradictoria  :  sed  maxime  eorum  quae 
"  in  genere  conveniunt." 

Keckermannj  does  not  employ  this,  but  another  de- 
finition of  Contraries ;  not,  however.  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  : 
and  all  his  examples  of  Contraries  are  taken  from  Ex- 
treme Opposites. 

Casparus  JBartholinus  :§  "  Contraria  sunt,  quse  sub 
"  eodem  genere  maxime  distant,  eidemque  subjecto  sus- 
"  ceptibili  a  quo  se  mutuo  expellunt,  vicissim  insunt,  nisi 
"  alterum  insit  a  natura  " 

Du  Hamel :  ||  "  Oppositio  contraria  est  inter  duo  ex- 
"  trema  positiva,  quse  sub  eodem  genere  posita  maxime 
"  distant,  et  ab  eodem  subjecto  sese  expellunt." 

Grammatica  Bationis,  sive  Institutiones  Logicse  :1[ 
"  Contraria  adversa  sunt  accidentia,  posita  sub  eodem 
"  genere,  quse  maxime  distant,  et  se  mutuo  pellunt  ab 
"  eodem  subjecto  in  quo  vicissim  insunt." 

Familiar  as    Sir  W.  Hamilton  was  with  the  whole 

*  Institutio  Logicae,  lib.  i.  cap.  16. 

t  Artis  Logicae  Compeudium,  Quaestionum  Logicarum  Determinatio, 
quaest.  19. 

X  Systema  Logicas. 

§  Enchiridion  Logicae  (Lipsiae,  1618)  lib.  i.  cap.  23. 

II  Philosopbia  vetus  et  nova  ad  usum  scholae  accommodata  (Amstelodami, 
1700)  p.  197. 

%  Oxonii,  1673. 


VIEW    OF    FORMAL    LOGIC.  537 

series  of  writers  on  Logic,  he  cannot  have  overlooked, 
and  can  hardly  have  forgotten,  such  passaijes  as  these. 
I  have  not  had  the  fortune  to  meet  with  a  single  passage, 
from  a  single  Aristotelian  writer,  which  can  be  cited  in  his 
support.  I  presume,  therefore,  that  he  intentionally 
made  (or  adopted  from  Krug)  a  change  in  the  meaning 
of  a  scientific  terra,  the  inverse  of  that  which  it  is  tlie 
proper  office  and  common  tendency  of  science  to  make. 
Instead  of  giving  a  more  determinate  signification  to  a 
name  vaguely  used,  by  binding  it  down  to  express  a 
precise  specific  distinction,  he  laid  hold  of  a  name  which 
already  denoted  a  definite  species,  and  applied  it  to  the 
entire  genus,  which  stood  in  no  need  of  a  name ;  leaving 
the  particular  species  unnamed.  But  if  he  knowingly 
took  this  very  unscientific  liberty  with  a  scientific  term, 
diverting  it  from  both  its  scientific  and  its  popular 
meaning, — leaving  the  scientific  vocabulary,  never  too 
rich,  with  one  expression  the  fewer,  and  an  important 
scientific  distinction  without  a  name, — he  at  least  should 
not  have  done  so  without  informing  tne  reader.  He 
should  not  have  led  the  unsuspecting  learner  to  believe 
that  this  was  the  received  use  of  the  term.  Remark, 
too,  that  he  embezzles  not  only  the  English  word,  but 
its  Grreek  and  Latin  equivalents,  exactly  as  if  he  agreed 
with  the  writers  of  tlie  Greek  and  Latin  treatises,  and 
was  only  explaining  their  meaning. 

V.  One  of  the  charges  brought  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
against  the  common  mode  of  stating  the  doctrine  of  the 
Syllogism,  is  that  it  does  not  obviate  the  objection 
often  made  to  the  syllogism  of  being  a  petitio  priitcipu, 
grounded  on  the  admitted  truth,  that  it  can  assert 
nothing  in  the  conclusion  which  has  not  already  been 
asserted  in  the  premises.  This  objection,  our  author 
says,*  "  stands  hitherto  unrefuted,  if  not  unrefutable." 
But  he  entertains  the  odd  idea,  that  it  can  be  got  rid  of 
by  merely  writing  the  propositions  in  a  different  order, 
putting  the  conclusion  first.  One  might  almost  imagine 
that  a   little  irony    had  been  intended  here.     Putting 

♦  Appendix  to  Lectures,  iv.  401,  and  Appendix  to  Discussions,  p.  652. 


538  MINOR    PECULIARITIES,    ETC. 

the  conclusion  first,  certainly  makes  it  impossible  any 
longer  to  say  that  the  syllogism  asserts  in  the  conclusion 
what  has  already  been  asserted  in  the  premises ;  and  if 
any  one  is  of  opinion  that  the  logical  relation  between 
premises  and  a  conclusion  depends  on  the  order  in  which 
they  are  pronounced,  such  an  objector,  I  must  allow,  is 
from  this  time  silenced.  But  our  author  can  have  me- 
ditated very  little  on  the  meaning  of  the  objection  of 
petitio  prindpii  against  the  Syllogism,  when  he  thought 
that  such  a  device  as  this  would  remove  it.  The  diffi- 
culty, which  that  objection  expresses,  lies  in  a  region  far 
below  the  depth  to  which  such  logic  reaches ;  and  he 
was  quite  right  in  regarding  the  objection  as  unrefuted. 
Nor  is  its  refutation,  I  conceive,  possible,  on  any  theory 
but  that  which  considers  the  Syllogism  not  as  a  process  of 
Inference,  but  as  the  mere  interpretation  of  the  record  of  a 
previous  process ;  the  major  premise  as  simply  a  formula 
for  making  particular  inferences ;  and  the  conclusions  of 
ratiocination  as  not  inferences  from  the  formula,  but  in- 
ferences drawn  according  to  the  formula.  This  theory, 
and  the  grounds  of  it,  having  been  very  fully  stated  in 
another  work,  need  not  be  further  noticed  here. 


589 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 


OP  SOME  NATURAL  PREJUDICES  COUNTENANCED  BY  SIR 
WILLIAM  HAMILTON,  AND  SOME  FALLACIES  WHICH  HE 
CONSIDERS     INSOLUBLE. 

We  have  concluded  our  review  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  as 
a  teacher  of  Logic ;  but  there  remain  to  be  noticed  a 
few  points,  not  strictly  belonging  either  to  Logic  or 
to  Psychology,  but  rather  to  what  is  inappropriately 
termed  the  Philosophia  Prima.  It  would  be  more 
properly  called  ultima^  since  it  consists  of  the  widest 
generalizations  respecting  the  laws  of  Existence  and 
Activity;  generalizations  which  by  an  unfortunate, 
though  at  first  inevitable  mistake,  men  fancied,  that 
they  could  reach  uno  saltu,  and  therefore  placed  them  at 
the  beginning  of  science,  though,  if  they  were  ever 
legitimate,  they  could  only  be  so  as  its  tardy  and  final 
result.  Every  physical  science,  up  to  the  time  of  Bacon, 
consisted  mainly  of  such  first  principles  as  these :  The 
ways  of  Nature  are  perfect :  Nature  abhors  a  vacuum  ; 
Natura  nan  hahet  saltum :  Nothing  can  come  out  of 
nothing :  Like  can  only  be  produced  by  like :  Things 
always  move  towards  their  own  place  :  Things  can  only 
be  moved  by  something  which  is  itself  moving ;  and  so 
forth.  And  the  Baconian  revolution  was  far  indeed 
from  expelling  such  doctrines  from  philosophy.  On  the 
contrary,  the  Cartesian  movement,  which  went  on  for  a 
full  century  simultaneously  with  the  Baconian,  threw 
up  many  more  of  these  imaginary  axioms  concerning 
things  in  general,  which  took  a  deep  root  in  Continental 
pliilosophy,  found  their  way  into  English,  and  are  by 
no  means,  even  now,  discredited  as  they  deserve  to  be. 


540  FALLACIOUS    MODES   OF    THOUGHT 

'  Most  of  these  were  fully  believed  by  the  philosophers 
who  maintained  them,  to  be  intuitively  evident  truths — 
revelations  of  Nature  in  the  depths  of  human  conscious- 
ness, and  recognisable  by  the  light  of  reason  alone  : 
while  all  the  time  tliey  were  merely  bad  generalizations 
of  the  vulgarest  outward  experience ;  rough  interpreta- 
tions of  the  appearances  most  familiar  to  sepse,  and 
which  therefore  had  grown  into  the  strongest  associa- 
tions in  thought ;  never  tested  by  the  conditions  of 
legitimate  induction,  not  only  because  those  conditions 
were  still  unknown,  but  because  these  wretched  first 
attempts  at  generalization  were  deemed  to  have  a  higher 
than  inductive  origin,  and  were  erected  into  general  laws 
irom  which  the  order  of  the  universe  might  be  deduced, 
and  to  which  everj'  scientific  theory  for  the  explanation 
of  phenomena  must  be  required  to  conform.  It  is  a 
material  point  in  the  estimation  of  a  philosopher  and 
of  his  doctrines,  whether  he  has  taken  his  side  for  or 
against  this  mode  of  philosophizing;  whether  he  has 
countenanced  any  of  these  spurious  axioms  by  his  adhe- 
sion. Sir  W.  Hamilton  cannot  be  acquitted  of  having 
done  so,  in  more  than  one  instance. 

In  treating  of  the  problem  of  Causality,  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  had  occasion  to  argue,  that  we  ought  not  to 
postulate  a  special  mental  law  in  order  to  explain  the 
belief  that  everything  must  have  a  cause,  since  that 
belief  is  sufficiently  accounted  for  by  the  "  Law  of  the 
Conditioned,"  which  makes  it  impossible  for  us  to  con- 
ceive an  absolute  commencement  of  anything.  I  do 
not  mean  to  return  to  the  discussion  of  this  theory  of 
Causality;  but  let  us  ask  ourselves  why  we  are  inter- 
dicted from  assuming  a  special  law,  in  order  to  account 

•  for  that  which  is  already  sufficiently  accounted  for  by 
a  general  one.  The  real  ground  of  the  prohibition  is 
what  our  author  terms  the  Law  of  Parcimony ;  a  prin- 
ciple identical  with  the  famous  maxim  of  the  Nominalists, 
known  as  Occam's  Eazor — E^itia  non  sunt  multiplicafida 
prater  necessitateni ;  understanding  by  Entia,  not  merely 
substances  but  also  Powers.     Sir  W.  Hamilton,  instead 


COUNTENANCED    BY    SIR    WILLTAM    HAMILTON.         541 

of  resting  it  on  this  logical  injunction,  grounds  it  on  an 
ontological  theory.  His  reason  is,  "  Nature  never  works 
"  by  more  and  more  complex  instruments  than  are  neces- 
"sary."*  He  cites.f  with  approbation,  the  maxims  of 
Aristotle,  "that  God  and  Nature  never  operate  without 

'*  effect    {ouofu    fiarrtv,  ovBev    eWeiirMQ,  iroiovai)  ;    they  never 

"operate  superfluously  (/xr/Sti/  Trepispyov — TnpiTTU)^ — 
"  apyo}Q) ;  but  always  through  one  rather  than  through  a 
"  plurality  of  means  {kuB'  ev,  fiaXXou  ^  Kara  iroXXa) :"  thus 
borrowing  a  general  theory  of  the  very  kind  which  Bacon 
exploded,  to  support  a  rule  which  can  stand  perfectly  well 
without  it.  Have  we  authority  to  declare  that  there  is 
anything  which  God  and  Nature  never  do  ?  Do  we  know 
all  Nature's  combinations?  Were  we  called  into  counsel 
in  fixing  its  limits?  By  what  canons  of  induction  has 
this  theory  ever  been  tried?  By  what  observations  has 
it  been  verified  ?  We  know  well  that  Nature,  in  many 
of  its  operations,  works  by  means  which  are  of  a  com- 
plexity so  extreme,  as  to  be  an  almost  insuperable  ob- 
stacle to  our  investigations.  On  what  evidence  do  we 
presume  to  say  that  this  complexity  was  necessary,  and 
that  the  effect  could  not  have  been  produced  in  a  simpler 
manner  ?  If  we  look  into  the  meaning  of  word.-^,  of  what 
kind  is  the  necessity  which  is  supi'osed  to  be  binding  on 
God  and  Nature — the  pressure  they  are  unable  to  escape 
from  ?  Is  there  any  necessity  in  Nature  which  Nature 
did  not  make  ?  or  if  not,  what  did  ?  What  is  this  power 
superior  to  Nature  and  its  author,  and  to  which  Nature 
is  compelled  to  adapt  itself? 

There  is  one  supposition  under  which  this  doctrine 
has  an  intelligible  meaning — the  hypothesis  of  the  Two 
Principles.  If  the  universe  was  moulded  into  its  pre- 
sent form  by  a  Being  who  did  not  make  it  wholly,  and 
who  was  impeded  by  an  obstacle  which  he  could  only 
partially  overcome — whether  that  obstacle  was  a  rival 
intelligence,  or,  as  Plato  thought,  an  inherent  incapacity 
in  Matter ;  it  is  on  that  supposition  admissible,  that  the 
Demiourgos  may  have  always  worked  by  the  simplest 

*  Appendix  to  Discussions,  p.  622.  t  Ibid.  p.  629. 


542  FALLACIOUS    MODES    OF    THOUGHT 

possible  means ;  tlie  simplest,  namely,  which  were  per- 
mitted by  the  opposition  of  the  conflicting  Power,  or 
the  intractableness  of  the  material.  This  is,  in  fact,  the 
doctrine  of  Leibnitz's  Theodicee  ;  his  famous  theory  that 
a  world,  made  by  God,  must  be  the  best  of  all  possible 
worlds,  that  is,  the  best  world  which  could  be  made 
under  the  conditions  by  which,  as  it  would  appear,  Pro- 
vidence was  restricted.  This  doctrine,  commonly  called 
Optimism,  is  really  Manicheism,  or,  to  call  it  by  its  more 
proper  name,  Sabseism.  The  word  "  possible"  assumes 
the  existence  of  hindrances  insurmountable  by  the  divine 
power,  and  Leibnitz  was  only  wrong  in  calling  a  power 
limited  by  obstacles  by  the  name  Omnipotence  :  for  it  is 
almost  too  obvious  to  be  worth  stating,  that  real  Omni- 
potence could  have  effected  its  ends  totally  without 
means,  or  could  have  made  any  means  sufficient.  This 
Saba3an  theory  is  the  only  one  by  which  the  assertion, 
that  Nature  always  works  by  the  simplest  means,  can  be 
made  consistent  with  known  fact.  Even  so,  it  remains 
wholly  unproved  ;  and,  were  it  proved,  would  be  but  a 
speculative  truth  of  Theology,  incapable  of  affording 
any  practical  guidance.  We  could  never  be  justified  in 
rejecting  an  hypothesis  for  being  too  complicated ;  it 
being  beyond  our  power  to  set  limits  to  the  complication 
of  the  means  that  might  possibly  be  necessary,  to  evade 
the  obstacles  which  Ahriman  or  Matter  may  have  per- 
versely thrown  in  the  Creator's  way. 

The  "  Law  of  Parcimony"  needs  no  such  support ;  it 
rests  on  no  assumption  respecting  the  ways  or  proceed- 
ings of  Nature.  It  is  a  purely  logical  precept ;  a  case  of 
the  broad  practical  principle,  not  to  believe  anything  of 
which  there  is  no  evidence.  When  we  have  no  direct 
knowledge  of  the  matter  of  fact,  and  no  reason  for  be- 
lieving it  except  that  it  would  account  for  another  matter 
of  fact,  all  reason  for  admitting  it  is  at  an  end  when  the 
fact  requiring  explanation  can  be  explained  from  known 
causes.  The  assumption  of  a  superfluous  cause,  is  a 
belief  without  evidence ;  as  if  we  were  to  suppose  that 
a  man  who  was  killed  by  falling  over  a  precipice,  must 


COUNTENANCED    BY   SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.         543 

have  taken  poison  as  well.  The  same  principle  which 
forbids  the  assumption  of  a  superfluous  fact,  forbids  that 
of  a  superfluous  law.  When  Newton  had  shown  that 
the  same  theorem  would  express  the  conditions  of  the 
planetary  motions  and  the  conditions  of  the  fall  of  bodies 
to  the  earth,  it  would  have  been  illogical  to  recognise 
two  distinct  laws  of  nature,  one  for  heavenly  and  the 
other  for  earthly  attraction  ;  since  both  these  laws,  when 
stripped  of  the  circumstances  ascertained  to  be  irrelevant 
to  the  efi'ect,  would  have  had  to  be  expressed  in  the  very 
same  words.  The  reduction  of  each  of  the  two  generali- 
zations to  the  expression  of  only  those  circumstances 
which  influence  the  result,  reduces  both  of  them  to  the 
same  proposition ;  and  to  decline  to  do  so,  would  be  to 
make  an  assumption  of  dijfference  between  the  cases,  for 
which  none  of  the  observations  afforded  the  smallest 
ground.  The  rule  of  Parcimony,  therefore,  whether 
applied  to  facts  or  to  theories,  implies  no  theory  con- 
cerning the  propensities  or  proceedings  of  Nature.  If 
Nature's  ways  and  inclinations  were  the  reverse  of  what 
they  are  supposed  to  be,  it  would  have  been  as  illegiti- 
mate as  it  is  now,  to  assume  a  fact  of  Nature  without 
any  evidence  for  it,  or  to  consider  the  same  property  as 
two  different  properties,  because  found  in  two  different 
kinds  of  objects. 

In  another  place,*  Sir  W.  Hamilton  says  that  the 
Law  of  Parcimony,  which  he  terms  "  the  most  impor- 
"  tant  maxim  in  regulation  of  philosophical  procedure 
"  when  it  is  necessary  to  resort  to  an  hypothesis,  has 
"  never,  perhaps,  been  adequately  expressed ;"  and  he 
proposes  the  following  expression  for  it :  "  Neither  more 
"  nor  more  onerous  causes  are  to  be  assumed,  than  are 
"  necessary  to  account  for  the  phaenomena."  This  con- 
ception of  some  causes  as  "  more  onerous"  to  the  general 
scheme  of  things  than  others,  is  a  distinction  greatly 
requiring  what  our  author  says  it  has  never  yet  had — 
to  be  "  articulately  expressed."  He  does  not,  however, 
articulate  it  in  general  terms,  but  only  in  its  application 

*  Appendix  to  Discussions,  pp.  628,  631. 


544  FALLACIOUS  MODES    OF    THOUGHT 

to  the  particular  question  of  Causality.  From  this  we 
may  collect, — 1st.  That  a  "  positive  power"  is  a  more 
onerous  hypothesis  than  a  "  negative  impotence."  2nd. 
That  a  special  hypothesis,  which  serves  to  explain  only 
one  phsenomenon,  is  more  onerous  than  a  general  one 
which  will  explain  many.  3rrl.  That  the  explanation 
of  an  effect  by  cause  of  which  the  very  existence  is 
hypothetical,  is  more  onerous  than  its  hypothetical  ex- 
planation by  a  cause  otherwise  known  to  exist.  The 
last  two  of  these  three  canons  are  but  particular  cases 
of  the  general  rule,  that  we  should  not  assume  an  hypo- 
thetical cause  of  a  phaenoinenon  which  admits  of  being 
accounted  for  by  a  cause  of  which  there  is  other  evi- 
dence.'^ The  remaining  canon,  that  we  should  prefer 
the  hypothesis  of  an  incapacity  to  that  of  a  power,  is,  I 
apprehend,  only  valid  when  its  infringement  would  be  a 
violation  of  one  of  the  other  two  rules. 

The  time-honoured,  but  gratuitous,  assumption,  re- 
specting Nature,  on  which  I  have  now  commented,  is 
not  the  only  generality  of  the  pre-Baconian  type  which 
Sir.  W.  Hamilton  has  countenanced.  He  gives  his  sanc- 
tion to  the  old  doctrine  that  "  a  thing  can  act  only  where 
it  is."  The  dictum  appears  in  this  direct  form  in  one  of 
the  very  latest  of  his  writings,  the  notes  for  an  intended 
memoir  of  Professor  Dugald  Stewart.f  He  has  so  much 
faith  in  it  as  to  make  it  the  foundation  of  two  of  his 
favourite  theories.  One  is,  that  J  ''the  thing  perceived, 
"  and  the  percipient  organ,  must  meet  in  place,  must  be 
"  contiguous.  The  consequence  of  this  doctrine  is  a 
"  complete  simplification  of  the  theory  of  perception,  and 
"  a  return  to  the  most  ancient  speculation  on  the  point. 

*  This  is  what  Newton  meant  by  a  vera  cam^a,  in  his  celebrated  maxim, 
"  Causas  rerum  naturalium  non  pluves  admitti  debere  quam  quae  et  veroe 
"  siid,  et  earuni  phgenomenis  explicandis  sufficiant."  It  is  singular  that 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  does  not  seem  to  have  understood,  that  by  wej'ce  causes 
Newton  meant  agencies  the  existence  of  which  was  otherwise  authen- 
ticated :  for  he  says  (footnote  to  Reid,  p.  230),  "  In  their  plain  meaning, 
"  the  words  et  verce  sint  are  redundant ;  or  what  follows  is  redundant,  and 
"the  whole  rule  a  barren  truism."  [But  in  the  Appendix  to  the  Dis- 
cussions (p.  631)  Sir  W.  Hamilton  puts  the  right  interpretation  on 
Newton's  maxim.] 

t  Appendix  to  Lectares,  ii.  522.  J  Ibid. 


COUNTENANCED    BT    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.         545 

"  All  sensible  cognition  is,  in  a  certain  acceptation,  re- 
"  duced  to  Touch,  and  this  is  the  very  conclusion  main- 
"  tained  by  the  venerable  authority  of  Deraocritus.  Ac- 
"  cording  to  this  doctrine,  it  is  erroneous  to  affirm  that 
"  we  are  percipient  of  distant  objects."  Conformably 
to  this,  we  have  seen  him  not  only  maintaining,  in 
opposition  to  Reid,  that  we  do  not  see  the  sun — that 
we  see  only  an  image  of  it  in  our  eye — bat  also,  that  we 
directly  perceive  Extension,  whether  by  sight  or  touch, 
only  in  our  own  bodily  organs :  thus  preferring  the  a 
priori  axiom,  that  a  thing  can  only  act  where  it  is,  to 
the  authority  of  those  "  natural  beliefs"  which  he,  in 
other  cases,  so  strenuously  asserts  against  inipugners, 
and  so  often  affirms  that  we  ought  either  to  accept  as  a 
whole,  or  never  appeal  to  at  all. 

The  other  theory  which  our  author  maintains  on  the 
authority  of  the  same  dictum,  is  that  the  mind  acts 
directly  throughout  the  whole  body,  and  not  through 
the  brain  only.  "  There  is*  no  good  ground  to  suppose 
"  that  the  mind  is  situate  solely  in  the  brain,  or  ex- 
"  clusively  in  any  part  of  the  body.  On  the  contrary, 
"  the  supposition  that  it  is  really  present  wherever  we 
"  are  conscious  that  it  acts, — in  a  word,  the  Peripatetic  \ 
"  aphorism,  The  soul  is  all  in  the  whole,  and  all  in  j 
"  every  part, — is  more  philosophical,  and  consequently,    | 

"  more  probable  than  any  other  opinion Even  if 

"  we  admit  that  the  nervous  system  is  the  part  to  which  | 
*'  it  is  proximately  united,  still  the  nervous  system  is  { 
**  itself  universally  ramified  throughout  the  body ;  and 
"  we  have  no  more  right  to  deny  that  the  mind  feels 
"  at  the  finger-points,  as  consciousness  assures  us,  than 
"  to  assert  that  it  thinks  exclusively  in  the  brain."  Sir 
W,  Hamilton  siiould  at  least  have  shown  how  this  hy- 
pothesis can  be  reconciled  with  the  fact,  that  a  slight 
pressure  on  the  nerve  at  a  place  intermediate  between 
the  finger  and  the  brain,  takes  away  the  mind's  power  of 
feeling  in  the  finger,  while  at  any  point  above  the  liga- 
ture the  feeling  is  the  same  as  before.     If  he  object  that 

»  Lectures,  ii.  127,  128. 

N  N 


546  FALLACIOUS    MODES    OB    THOUGHT 

the  mode  in  which  the  pressure  impedes  sensation  need 
not  be  by  interrupting  the  communication  between  the 
finger  and  the  brain,  but  may  be  by  disturbing  the 
functions  of  the  nerve  itself,  we  may  ask,  why  is  this 
disturbance  confined  to  the  part  of  the  nerve  which  is 
below  the  point  of  pressure,  while  above  that  point  the 
functions  remain  unimpaired?  Many  other  objections 
might  be  brought  against  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory,  if 
my  object  were  to  discuss  the  physiological  question;  but 
my  object  is  only  to  show  the  amount  of  evidence  which 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  will  disregard,  rather  than  admit  that 
one  thing  can  act  directly  upon  another  without  immediate 
contact.*  What  he  would  have  thought  of  the  appli- 
cation of  his  doctrine  to  the  splar  system,  he  has  not 
told  us  (the  recent  developments  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Unity  of  Force  being  posterior  to  his  time) :  but  it  com- 
mits him  to  the  opinion,  that  gravitation  acts  through 
an  intervening  medium,  which  he  must  postulate,  first 
as  existing,  and  secondly,  as  possessed  of  inscrutable  pro- 
perties ;  in  palpable  repugnance  to  his  own  Law  of 
Parcimony,  and  to  all  the  canons  grounded  thereon. 
Descartes  postulated  his  vortices  in  obedience  to  the 
same  axiom. 

What,   however,  is  the  worth  of  this  doctrine,  that 

(things  can  only  act  upon  one  another  by  direct  contact  ? 
Mr.  Carlyle  says,  "a  thing  can  only  act  where  it  is; 
with  all  my  heart ;  only  where  is  it  ?"  In  one  sense  of 
the  word,  a  thing  is  wherever  its  action  is:  its  power  is 
there,  though  not  its  corporeal  presence.  But  to  say 
that  a  thiug  can  only  act  where  its  power  is,  would  be 
the  idlest  of  mere  identical  propositions.  And  where  is 
the  warrant  for  asserting  that  a  thing  cannot  act  when 
it  is  not  locally  contiguous  to  the  thing  it  acts  upon  ? 
Shall  we  be  told  that  such  action  is  inconceivable  ?  Even 
if  it  was,  this,  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  philo- 
sophy, is  no  evidence  of  impossibility.     But  that  it  is 

*  lu  the  Lectures,  I  mean  :  for,  in  the  Dissertations  on  Eeid  (p.  861), 
the  doctrine,  that  we  feel  in  the  toe,  and  not  in  a  sensorium  commune,  is'at 
least  HO  iar  retracted,  that  tlie  possibility  of  the  opposite  tlieory  is  ex- 
plicitly acknowledged. 


COUNTENANCED    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.         547 

conceivable,  is  shown  by  every  fairy  tale,  as  well  as  by 
every  religion.  Then,  again,  what  is  the  meaning  of 
contiguity?  According  to  the  best  physical  knowledge 
we  possess,  things  are  never  actually  contiguous :  what 
we  term  contact  between  particles,  only  means  that  they 
are  in  the  degree  of  proximity  at  which  their  mutual 
repulsions  are  in  equilibrium  with  their  attractions.  If 
so,  instead  of  never,  things  always  act  on  one  another  at 
some,  though  it  may  be  a  very  small  distance.  The 
belief  that  a  thing  can  only  act  where  it  is,  is  a  common 
case  of  inseparable,  though  not  ultimately  indissoluble, 
association.  It  is  an  unconscious  generalization,  of  the 
roughest  possible  description,  from  the  most  familiar 
cases  of  the  mutual  action  of  bodies,  superficially  con- 
sidered. The  temporary  difficulty  found  in  apprehending 
any  action  of  body  upon  body  unlike  what  people  were 
accustomed  to,  created  a  Natural  Prejudice,  which  was 
long  a  serious  impediment  to  the  reception  of  the  New- 
tonian theory  :  but  it  was  hoped  that  the  final  triumph 
of  that  theory  had  extinguished  it ;  that  all  educated  per- 
sons were  now  aware  that  action  at  a  distance  is  intrinsi- 
cally quite  as  credible  as  action  in  contact,  and  that  there 
is  no  reason,  apart  Irom  specific  experience,  to  regard  the 
one  as  in  any  respect  less  probable  than  the  other.  That 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  should  be  an  instance  to  the  contrary, 
is  an  example  of  the  obstinate  vitality  of  these  idota  tribm, 
and  shows  that  we  are  never  safe  against  the  rejuve- 
nescence of  the  most  superannuated  error,  if  in  throwing 
it  off  we  have  not  reformed  the  bad  habit  of  thought, 
the  wi'ong  and  unscientific  tendency  of  the  intellect,  from 
which  the  error  took  its  rise.* 

*  In  the  course  of  his  speculations  our  author  comes  across  a  fact  which 
is  positively  irrecoucileable  with  his  axiom ;  the  fact  of  repulsion.  Thi.s 
brings  him  tx)  a  dead  stand.  He  knows  not  whether  to  advance  or  recede. 
Repulsion,  he  says  (Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  852)  "remains,  as  ap|>a- 
"  rently  an  actio  in  distans,  even  when  forced  upon  us  as  a  fact,  still 
"  inconceivable  as  a  possibility."  He  is  soon  afterwards  obliged  to  confess 
that  the  same  is  true  of  attraction :  "  As  attraction  and  repulsion  seem 
"  equally  actiones  in  distans,  it  is  not  more  dificult  to  realize  to  ourselves 
•'the  action  of  the  one,  than  the  action  of  the  other."  Action  from  a 
distance  being  "  a  fact,"  though  inconceivable,  this  fact  would  seem  to 

N  N  2 


548  FALLACIOUS   MODES    OP    THOUGHT 

Though  but  remotely  connected  with  the  preceding 
considerations,  yet  as  belonging  in  conimon  with  them 
to  the  subject  of  Fallacies,  1  will  notice  in  this  place 
the  curious  partiality  which  our  author  shows  to  a  par- 
ticular group  of  sophisms,  the  Eleatic  arguments  for  the 
impossibility  of  motion.  He  deemed  these  arguments, 
though  leading  to  a  false  conclusion,  to  be  irrefutable;  as 
Brown  thought  concerning  Berkeley's  argument  against 
the  existence  of  matter — that  as  a  mere  play  of  reason- 
ing it  was  unanswerable,  while  it  was  impossible  for  the 
human  mind  to  admit  the  conclusion ;  forgetting  that  if 
this  were  so  it  would  be  a  redicctio  act  absurdum  of  the 
reasoning  faculty.  There  is  no  philosopher  to  whom,  I 
imagine.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  would  have  less  liked  to  be 
assimilated,  than  Brown ;  and  he  would  probably  have 
defended  himself  against  the  imputation,  by  saying  that 
the  Eleatic  arguments  do  not  prove  motion  to  be  impos- 
sible, but  only  to  be  inconceivable  by  us.  Yet  if  a  fact 
which  we  see  and  feel  every  minute  of  our  lives,  is  not 
conceivable  by  us,  what  is  ?  Our  author  does  not  enter  at 
any  length  into  the  question,  but  expresses  his  opinion 
on  several  occasions  incidentally.  "  It  is,"  he  says,* 
"  on  the  inabihty  of  the  mind  to  conceive  either  the 
"  ultimate  indivisibility,  or  the  endless  divisibility  of 
"  space  and  time,  that  the  arguments  of  the  Eleatic 
"  Zeno  against  the  possibility  of  motion  are  founded  ; 
"  arguments  which  at  least  show,  that  motion,  however 
"  certain  as  a  fact,  cannot  be  conceived  possible,  as  it 
"  involves  a  contradiction."  We  have  been  told  in  very 
emphatic  terms  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  that  the  Law  of 
Contradiction  is  binding  not  on  our  conceptions  merely, 
but  on  Things.  If,  then,  motion  involves  a  contradic- 
tion, how  is  it  possible  ?  and  if  it  is  possible,  and  a  fact, 
as  we  know  it  to  be,  how  can  it  involve  a  contradiction? 

i-equire  of  him  the  retractation  of  his  axiom  :  yet  he  does  not  retract  it. 
I  need  hardly  remark  that  attraction  and  repulsion  are  not  inconceivable ; 
except  indeed  in  another  of  the  numerous  senses  of  that  equivocal  word ; 
tliat  in  which  it  is  used  when  our  author  tells  us  that  all  ultimate  facts  are 
inconceivable,  meaning  only  that  they  are  inexplicable. 

*  Lectures,  ii.  373.    To  the  same  effect,  iv.  71. 


COUNTENANCED   BY   SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.         549 

The  appearance  of  contradiction  must  necessarily  be 
fallacious,  even  were  we  unable  to  point  out  tlie  fallacy. 
Our  author,  apparently,  has  attempted  to  resolve  it,  and 
failed.  He  calls  the  argument*  "  an  exposition  of  the  con- 
tradictions involved  in  our  notion  of  motion,"  and  says 
that  its  "  fallacy  has  not  yet  been  detected."  And,  again,t 
"  The  Eleatic  Zeno's  demonstration  of  the  impossibility 
"  of  motion  is  not  more  insoluble  tlian  could  be  framed 
"  a  proof  that  the  present  has  no  reality :  for  however 
"  certain  we  may  be  of  both,  we  can  positively  think 
"  neither."  It  must,  one  would  suppose,  be  a  great  dif- 
ficulty, which  could  appear  insoluble  to  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton. The  "  demonstration,"  at  all  events,  cannot  yet 
have  been  refuted,  and  superhuman  ingenuity  must  be 
needed  to  refute  it.  Yet  the  fallacy  in  it  has  been 
pointed  out  again  and  again ;  and  the  contradictions 
which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  regards  it  as  an  exposure  of, 
do  not  exist. 

Zeno's  reasonings  against  motion,  as  handed  down  by 
Aristotle,  consist  of  four  arguments,  which  are  stated  and 
criticised  with  considerable  prolixity  by  Bayle.  Several 
of  these  are  substantially  the  same  argument  in  different 
forms,  and  if  we  examine  the  two  most  plausible  of 
them  it  will  suffice.  The  first  is  the  ingenious  fallacy 
of  Achilles  and  the  Tortoise.  If  Achilles  starts  a 
thousand  yards  behind  the  tortoise,  and  runs  a  hundred 
times  as  fast;  still,  while  Achilles  runs  those  thousand 
yards,  the  tortoise  will  have  got  on  ten  ;  while  Achilles 
runs  those  ten,  the  tortoise  will  have  run  a  tenth  of  a 
yard ;  and  as  this  process  may  be  continued  to  infinity, 
Achilles  will  never  overtake  the  tortoise.  In  our  author's 
opinion,  this  argument  is  logically  correct,  and  evolves 
a  contradiction  in  our  idea  of  motion.  But  it  is  neither 
logically  correct,  nor  evolves  a  contradiction  in  anything. 
It  assumes,  of  course,  the  infinite  divisibility  of  space. 
But  we  have  no  need  to  entangle  ourselves  in  the  meta- 
physical discussion  whether  this  assumption  is  warrant- 
able.    Let  it  be  granted  or  not,  the  argument  always 

*  Foot-note  to  Eeid,  p.  102.    f  Appendix  to  Discussions,  p.  606. 


550  TALLACIOUS    MODES    OF    THOUGHT 

remains  fallacious.  The  fallacy  lies  in  the  assertion  that 
"  this  process  may  be  continued  to  infinity/'  Infinity 
is  here  ambiguous.  The  conclusion  drawn  is  that  the 
process  may  be  continued  for  an  infinite  diiraii'm  of  time. 
But  the  premise  is  only  true  in  the  sense,  that  it  may  be 
continued  for  an  infinite  wtmher  of  divinons  of  time.  The 
argument  confounds  infinity  and  infinite  divisibility. 
Tt  assumes  that  to  pass  through  an  infinitely  divisible 
space,  requires  an  infinite  time.  But  the  infinite  divisi- 
bility of  space  means  the  infinite  divisibility  of  finite 
space :  and  it  is  only  infinite  space  which  cannot  be 
passed  over  in  less  than  infinite  time.  What  the  argu- 
ment proves  is,  that  to  pass  over  the  infinitely  divisible 
space,  requires  an  infinitely  divisible  time:  but  an  infi- 
nitely divisible  time  may  itself  be  finite ;  the  smallest 
finite  time  is  infinitely  divisible  ;  the  argument,  therefore, 
is  consistent  with  the  tortoise's  being  overtaken  in  the 
smallest  finite  time.  It  is  a  sophism  of  the  type  Igno- 
ratio  Elenchi,  or,  as  Archbishop  Whately  terms  it.  Irre- 
levant Conclusion  ;  an  argument  which  proves  a  different 
proposition  from  that  which  it  pretends  to  prove,  the 
difference  of  meaning  being  disguised  by  an  ambiguity 
of  language. 

The  other  plausible  form  of  Zeno's  argument  is  at 
first  sight  more  favourable  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory, 
being  a  real  attempt  to  prove  that  the  fact  of  motion 
involves  impossible  conditions.  The  usual  mode  of 
stating  it  is  this.  If  a  body  moves,  it  must  move  either 
in  the  place  where  it  is,  or  in  the  place  where  it  is  not : 
but  either  of  these  is  impossible :  therefore  it  cannot 
move.  First  of  all,  this  argument,  even  if  we  were 
unable  to  refute  it,  does  not  exhibit  any  contradiction 
in  our  "  notion"  of  motion.  We  do  not  conceive  a 
body  as  moving  either  in  the  place  where  it  is,  or  in  the 
place  where  it  is  not,  but  from  the  former  to  the  latter  : 
in  other  words,  we  conceive  the  body  as  in  the  one  place 
and  in  the  other  at  successive  instants.  Where  is  the 
"  contradiction"  between  being  in  one  place  at  this 
moment,  and  in  another  at  the  next  ?    As  for  the  fallacy 


COUNTENANCED    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.         551 

itself,  it  is  strange  that  when  everybody  sees  the  answer 
to  it,  a  practised  logician  should  have  any  difficulty  in 
putting  that  answer  into  logical  forms.  It  is  not  necessary 
that  motion  should  be  in  a  place.  A  body  must  be 
in  a  place ;  but  motion  is  not  a  body — it  is  a  change  : 
and  that  a  change  of  place  should  be  either  in  the  old 
place  or  in  the  new,  is  a  real  contradiction  in  terms.  To 
put  the  thing  in  another  way ;  Place  may  be  understood 
in  two  senses  :  it  may  either  be  a  divisible,  or  an  indivi- 
sible part  of  space.  If  it  be  a  divisible  part,  as  a  room, 
or  a  street,  it  is  true  that  in  that  sense,  every  motion 
is  in  a  place,  that  is,  within  a  limited  portion  of  space  : 
but  in  this  meaning  of  the  term  the  dilemma  breaks 
down,  for  the  body  really  moves  in  the  place  where  it 
is;  the  room,  the  field,  or  the  house.  If,  on  the  con- 
trary, we  are  to  understand  by  Place  an  indivisible 
minimum  of  space,  the  proposition  that  motion  must  be 
in  a  place  is  evidently  false ;  for  motion  cannot  be  in 
that  which  has  no  parts ;  it  can  only  be  to  ox  from  it. 

A  parallel  sophism  might  easily  be  invented,  turning 
upon  Time  instead  ot"  Space.  It  might  be  said  that  sun- 
set is  impossible,  since  if  it  be  possible,  it  must  take  place 
either  while  the  sun  is  still  up,  or  after  it  is  down.  The 
answer  is  obvious  :  it  is  just  the  change  from  one  to  the 
other  which  is  sunset.  And  so  it  is  the  change  from  one 
position  in  space  to  another  which  is  motion.  The 
parallelism  between  the  two  cases  was  evidently  seen 
by  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  and  the  sophism  was  too  hard  for 
liim  in  both :  and  this  is  what  he  must  have  meant  by 
saying  that  we  cannot  "positively  think'  the  Present. 
That  he  should  have  missed  the  solution  of  the  fallacy 
is  strange  enough ;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  assertion 
that  we  have  no  positive  perception,  on  the  one  hand 
of  Motion,  on  the  other,  of  present  time,  deserves  notice 
as  one  of  the  most  curious  deliverances  of  so  earnest  an 
asserter  of  "  our  natural  beliefs." 

These  paralogisms  are  only  part  of  a  long  list  of 
puzzles  concerning  infinity,  which,  though  by  no  means 
hard  to  clear  up,   appear  to   our  author  insoluble.     1 


552 


FALLACIOUS    MODES    OF    THOUGHT 


append  in  a  note  the  entire  list.*  Many  of  them  are 
resolved  by  the  observations  already  made,  their  difficulty 
being  merely  that  of  separating  the  two  ideas  of  Infinite 
and  Infinitely  Divisible.  To  our  author's  thinking,  infi- 
nite divisibility  and  the  Finite  contradict  one  another. 
But  even  allowing  (which,  as  was  seen  in  a  former 
chapter,  I  do  not)  that  infinite  divisibilit}''  is  inconceiv- 
able, it  does  not  therefore  involve  a  contradiction.  The 
remaining  puzzles  mostly  result  from  inability  to  con- 
ceive that  one  infinity  can  be  greater  or  less  than  another; 
a  conception  familiar  to  all  mathematicians.  Our  author 
refuses  to  consider  that  a  space  or  a  time  which  is  infinite 
in  one  direction  and  bounded  in  another,  is  necessarily 
less  than  a  space  or  a  time  which  is  infinite  in  every 
direction.  The  space  between  two  parallels,  or  between 
two  diverging  lines  or  surfaces,  extends  to  infinity,  but 
it  is  necessarily  less  than  entire  space,  being  a  part  of 
it.  Not  only  is  one  infinity  greater  than  another,  but 
one  infinity  may  be    infinitely    greater   than    another. 

*  "  Contradictions  proving  the  Psychological  Theory  of  the  Con-ditioned. 

"  1.  Finite  cannot  comprehend,  contain,  the  Infinite. — Yet  an  inch  or 
"minute,  say,  are  finites,  and  are  divisible  ad  infinitum,  that  is,  their  ler- 
"  minated  division  iucogitable. 

"  2.  Infinite  cannot  be  terminated  or  begun.— Yet  eternity  ab  ante  ends 
"  now ;  and  eternity  a  post  begins  now.     So  apply  to  Space. 

"  3.  There  cannot  be  two  infinite  maxima. — Yet  eternity  ab  ante  and  q, 
"post  are  two  infinite  maxima  of  time. 

"  4.  Infinite  maximum  if  cut  in  two,  the  halves  cannot  be  each  iufinite, 
"  for  nothing  can  be  greater  than  infinite,  and  thus  they  could  not  be 
"parts;  nor  finite,  for  thus  two  finite  halves  would  make  an  infinite 
"  whole. 

"  5.  What  contains  infinite  quantities  (extensions,  proteusions,  inten- 
"  sions)  cannot  be  passed  through, — come  to  au  end.  An  inch,  a  minute, 
"  a  degree  contains  these :  ergo,  &c.  Take  a  minute.  This  contains  an 
"  infinitude  of  protended  quantities,  which  must  follow  one  after  another ; 
"  but  an  infinite  series  of  successive  pretensions  can,  ex  ievmino,  never  be 
"  ended ;  ergo,  &c. 

"  6.  An  infinite  maximum  cannot  but  be  all-inclusive.  Time  ab  ante 
'■  and  a  post  infinite  and  exclusive  of  each  other;  ergo,  &c. 

"  7.  An  infinite  number  of  quantities  must  make  up  either  an  infinite  or 
"  a  finite  whole.  I.  The  former.-^But  an  inch,  a  minute,  a  degree,  contain 
"  each  an  infinite  number  of  quantities ;  therefore  an  inch,  a  minute,  a 
"  degree,  are  each  infinite  wholes ;  which  is  absurd.  II.  The  latter. — An 
"  infinite  number  of  quantities  would  thus  make  up  a  finite  quantity,  which 
"  is  equally  absurd. 

"  8.  If  we  take  a  finite  quantity  (as  an  inch,  a  minute,  a  degree),  it  would 


COUNTENANCED    BY    SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON.         553 

Mathematicians  habitually  assume  this,  and  reason  from 
it;  and  the  result  always  coming  out  true,  the  assump- 
tion is  justified.  But  mathematicians,  I  must  admit, 
seldom  know  exactly  what  they  are  about  when  they  do 
this.  As  the  results  always  prove  right,  they  know  em- 
pirically that  the  process  cannot  be  wrong — that  the  pre- 
mises must  be  true  in  a  sense ;  but  in  what  sense,  it  is 
beyond  the  ingenuity  of  most  of  them  to  understand. 
The  doctrine  long  remained  a  part  of  that  mathematical 
mysticism,  so  mercilessly  shown  up  by  Berkeley  in  his 
*'  Analyst,"  and  "  Defence  of  Freethinking  in  Mathema- 
tics." To  clear  it  up  required  a  philosophical  mathema- 
tician— one  who  should  be  both  a  mathematician  and  a 
metaphj'sician  :  and  it  found  one.  To  complete  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  discomfiture,  this  philosophic  mathematician 
is  his  old  antagonist  Mr.  De  Morgan,  whom  he  described 
as  too  much  of  a  mathematician  to  be  anything  of  a 
philosopher.*  Mr.  De  Morgan,  however,  has  proved 
hirasell,  as  far  as  this  subject  is  concerned,  a  far  better 

'•  appear  equally  that  there  are,  and  that  there  are  not,  an  equal  number 
"  of  quantities  between  these  and  a  greatest,  and  between  these  and  a 
"  least. 

"  9.  An  absolutely  quickest  motion  is  that  which  passes  from  one  point 
"  to  another  in  space  in  a  minimum  of  time.  But  a  quickest  motion  from 
"  one  point  to  another,  say  a  mile  distance,  and  from  one  to  another,  say  a 
"  million  million  of  miles,  is  thought  the  same  :  which  is  absurd. 

"10.  A  wheel  turned  with  quickest  motion;  if  a  spoke  be  prolonged, 
'•  it  will,  therefore,  be  moved  by  a  motion  quicker  than  the  quickest.  The 
"  same  may  be  shown  using  the  rim  and  the  nave. 

•'11.  Contradictory  are  Boscovich  Points,  which  occupy  space,  and  are 
"  unextended.     Dynamism,  therefore,  inconceivable.     E  contra. 

"  12.  Atomism  also  inconceivable ;  for  this  supposes  atoms, — minima 
"  extended  but  indivisible. 

"  13.  A  quantity,  say  a  foot,  has  an  infinity  of  parts.  Any  part  of  this 
"  quantity,  say  an  inch,  has  also  an  infinity.  But  one  infinity  is  not  larger 
'•  than  another.     Therefore  an  inch  is  equal  to  a  foot. 

"  14.  If  two  divaricating  lines  are  produced  ad  infinitum  from  a  point 
"  where  they  form  an  acute  angle,  like  a  pyramid,  the  base  will  be  infinite, 
"and,  at  the  same  time,  not  infinite;  1°.  Because  terminated  by  two 
"  points ;  and,  2°.  Because  shorter  than  the  sides ;  3°.  Base  could  not  be 
"  drawn,  because  sides  infinitely  long. 

"  lo.  An  atom,  as  existent,  must  be  able  to  be  turned  round.  But  if 
"  turned  round,  it  must  have  a  right  and  left  hand,  &c.,  and  these  its  signs" 
[sides  ?]  "  must  change  their  place :  therefore,  be  extended."  (Appendix  to 
Lectures,  ii.  527-529.) 

*  Appendix  to  Discussions,  p.  707. 


554  FALLACIOUS    MODES   OF   THOUGHT. 

metaphysician  than  Sir  W.  Hamilton.  He  has  let  the 
light  of  reason  into  all  the  logical  obscurities  and  para- 
doxes of  the  infinitesimal  calculus.  By  merely  follow- 
ing out,  more  thoroughly  than  had  been  done  before, 
the  rational  conception  of  infinitesimal  division,  as 
synonymous  with  division  into  as  many  and  as  small 
parts  as  we  choose,  without  any  limit,  Mr.  De  Morgan, 
in  his  Algebra,  has  fully  explained  and  justified  the  con- 
ception of  successive  orders  of  difterentials,  each  of  them 
infinitel}^  less  than  the  differential  of  the  preceding,  and 
infinitely  greater  than  that  of  the  succeeding  order. 
Whoever  is  acquainted  with  this  masterly  specimen  of 
analysis,  will  find  his  way  through  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
series  of  riddles  respecting  Infinity,  without  ever  being 
at  a  loss  for  their  solution.  I  shall  therefore  trouble  the 
reader  no  further  with  them  in  this  place. 


555 


CHAPTER  XXV. 


SIR  WILLIAM    HAMILTON  S  THEORY  OP  PLEASURE   AND   PAIN. 

I  HAVE  now  concluded  my  remarks  on  the  principal 
department  of  Sir  W,  Hamilton's  psj'chology,  that  which 
relates  to  the  CoG^nitive  Faculties.  The  remaining  two 
of  the  three  portions  into  which  he  divides  the  subject, 
are  the  Feelings,  and  what  he  terms  the  Conative  Facul- 
ties, meaning  those  which  tend  to  Action.  On  the  Cona- 
tive Faculties,  however,  he  barely  touches,  in  the  con- 
cluding part  of  his  last  lecture ;  and  of  the  Feelings  he 
does  not  treat  at  any  length.  What  he  propounds  on 
the  subject,  chiefly  consists  of  a  general  theory  of  Plea- 
sure and  Pain.  Not  a  theory  of  what  they  are  in  them- 
selves, for  he  is  not  so  mucli  the  dupe  of  words  as  to 
suppose  that  they  are  anything  but  what  we  feel  them 
to  be.  The  speculation  with  which  he  has  presented  us, 
does  not  relate  to  their  essence,  but  to  the  causes  they 
depend  on ;  "  the*  general  conditions  which  determine 
"the  existence  of  Pleasure  and  Pain  ....  the  funda- 
"  mental  law  by  which  these  phsenomena  are  governed 
"  in  all  their  manifestations." 

The  inquiry  is  scientifically  legitimate,  and  of  great 
interest ;  but  we  must  not  be  very  confident  that  it  is  a 
practicable  one,  or  can  lead  to  any  positive  result.  It  is 
quite  possible  that  in  seeking  for  the  law  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  like  Bacon  in  seeking  for  the  laws  of  the  sen- 
sible properties  of  bodies,  we  may  be  looking  for  unity 
of  cause,  where  there  is  a  plurality,  perhaps  a  multitude, 
of  different  causes.  Such  attempts,  however,  even  if  un- 
successful, are  far  from  being  entirely  useless.     They 

*  Lectures,  ii.  434. 


556  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's 

often  lead  to  a  more  careful  study  of  the  phsenomenon 
in  some  of  its  aspects,  and  to  the  discovery  of  relations 
between  them,  not  previously  understood,  which  though 
not  adequate  to  the  formation  of  an  universal  theory  of 
the  phsenomenon,  afford  a  clearer  insight  into  some  of  its 
forms  and  varieties  This  merit  must  be  allowed  to  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  theory,  in  common  with  several  others 
which  preceded  it  on  tlie  same  subject.  But,  regarded  as 
a  theorem  of  the  universal  conditions  which  are  present 
whenever  pleasure  (or  pain)  is  present,  and  absent  when- 
ever it  is  absent,  the  doctrine  will  hardly  bear  investi- 
gation. The  simplest  and  most  familiar  cases  are  exactly 
those  which  obstinately  refuse  to  be  reduced  within  it. 

I  shall,  as  usual,  state  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory  in  his 
own  words,  though  in  the  present  case  it  is  a  question- 
able advantage,  the  terras  being  so  general  and  abstract 
that  they  are  scarcely  capable  of  being  understood,  apart 
from  the  illustrations.  "  Pleasure,"  he  says,*  "  is  a 
"reflex  of  the  spontaneous  and  unimpeded  exertion  of 
"a  power,  of  whose  energy  we  are  conscious.  Pain,  a 
"  reflex  of  the  overstrained  or  repressed  exertion  of  such 
"  a  power."  By  a  "  reflex"  he  has  shortly  before  said 
thatf  he  means  merely  a  "concomitant-,"  but  1  think  it 
will  appear  that  he  means  at  least  an  effect.  At  all 
events,  these  are  what  he  regards  as  the  ultimate  con- 
ditions of  pleasure  and  pain  ;  the  most  general  expression 
of  the  circumstances  in  which  they  occur. 

This  theory  was  of  course  suggested  by  the  pleasures 
and  pains  of  intellectual  or  physical  exertion,  or,  as  it  is 
otherwise  termed,  exercise.  1  hese  are  the  phaenomena 
which  principally  afford  to  it  such  foundation  of  fact, 
and  such  plausibility  in  speculation,  as  it  possesses.  As 
we  all  know,  moderate  exertion,  either  of  body  or  mind, 
is  pleasurable ;  a  greater  amount  is  painful,  except  when 
set  in  motion  by  an  impulse  which  renders  it,  in  our 
author's  meaning  oi'  the  word,  "  spontaneous  :"  and  a  felt 
impediment  to  any  kind  of  active  exertion,  when  there  is 
an  impulse  towards  it,  is  painful.     It  at  first  appears  as 

*  Lectures,  ii.  4i0.        f  Ibid.  p.  436. 


THEORY    OF    PLEASURE   AND   PAIN.  557 

if  Sir  W.  Hamilton  had  overlooked  the  pains  and  plea- 
sures in  which  the  mind  and  body  are  passive,  as  in  most 
of  the  organic,  and  a  larcre  proportion  of  the  emotional 
pleasures  and  pains.  H^  claims,  however,  to  include  all 
these  in  his  formula.  The  "  powers"  and  "  energies" 
whose  free  action  he  holds  to  be  the  condition  of  plea- 
sure, and  their  impeded  or  overstrained  action,  of  pain, 
include  our  passive  susceptibilities  as  well  as  our  active 
energies.  Accordingly  he  suggests  a  correction  of  his  own 
language,  saying  that  "  occupation"  or  "  exercise"  would 
perhaps  be  fitter  expressions  than  "  energy."*  "  The 
"  term  energy, \  which  is  equivalent  to  act,  actioity,  or 
"  operation,  is  here  used  to  comprehend  also  all  the  mixed 
"  states  of  action  and  passion  of  which  we  are  conscious  ; 
"  for,  inasmuch  as  we  are  conscious  of  any  modification 
"  of  mind,  there  is  necessarily  more  than  a  mere  passivity 
"  of  the  subject ;  consciousness  itself  implying  at  least  a 
"  reaction"  (what  has  become  of  his  doctrine  that  to  be 
conscious  of  a  feeling  is  only  another  phrase  for  having 
the  feeling  ?)  "  Be  this,  however,  as  it  may,  the  nouns 
"  energy,  act,  activity,  operation,  with  the  correspondent 
"  verbs,  are  to  be  understood  to  denote,  indifferently  and 
"  in  general,  all  the  processes  of  our  higher  and  our  lower 
"  life  of  which  we  are  conscious." 

Understanding  the  theory  in  this  enlarged  sense,  let 
us  test  it  by  application  to  one  of  the  simplest  of  our 
organic  feelings,  the  pleasure  of  a  sweet  taste.  This 
pleasure,  according  to  the  theory,  arises  from  the  free 
exercise,  without  either  restraint  or  excess,  of  one  of  our 
powers  or  capacities:  what  capacity  shall  we  call  it? 
That  of  tasting  sweetness  ?  This  will  not  do  ;  for  if  the 
capacity  of  having  the  sensation  of  sweet  is  called  into 
play  in  any  degree,  great  or  small,  the  effect  is  a  sweet 
taste,  which  is  a  pleasure.  Besides,  instead  of  a  sweet  -  <>. 
taste,  let  us  suppose  an  acrid  taste.  In  this  taste  the  ,  /  o  I 
capacity  exercised  is  that  of  tasting  acridity.  But  the 
result  of  the  exercise  of  this  capacity,  neither  repressed 
nor  overstrained,  which  therefore,  according  to  the  theory,    ' 

*  Lectures,  ii.  note  to  p.  435,  aad  p.  4^6.        f  Ibid.  p.  435. 


658  SIR    WILLIAM    HAxMILTOn's 

should  be  a  pleasure,  is  an  acrid  taste,  which  is  a  pain. 
It  must,  therefore,  be  meant  that  the  capacity  which 
when  freely  exercised  causes  pleasure,  and  when  re- 
pressed or  overstrained,  pain,  is  some  more  general 
capacity  than  that  of  sweet  or  acrid  taste — say  the 
power  of  taste  in  the  abstract :  that  the  power  of  taste, 
the  organic  action  of  the  gustatory  nerves,  by  its  spon- 
taneous exercise,  yields  pleasure,  and  by  its  repression, 
or  its  strained  exercise,  produces  pain.  The  theory 
thus  entirely  turns  upon  what  is  meant  by  spontaneous ; 
as  is  shown  still  more  clearly  by  our  author's  comments. 
"  It  has  been  stated,"  he  observes  in  a  recapitulation  of 
his  doctrine,*  "  that  a  feeling  of  pleasure  is  experienced, 
"  when  any  power  is  consciously  exercised  in  a  suitable 
"  manner ;  that  is,  when  we  are  neither,  on  the  one  hand, 
"  conscious  of  any  restraint  upon  the  energy  which  it  is 
"  disposed  spontaneously  to  put  forth,  nor  on  the  other, 
"  conscious  of  any  effort  in  it  to  put  Ibrth  an  amount  of 
"energy  greater  either  in  degree  or  in  continuance,  than 
"  what  it  is  disposed  freely  to  exert.  In  other  words,  we 
"  feel  positive  pleasure,  in  proportion  as  oiir  powers  are 
*'  exercised,  but  not  over-exercised ;  we  feel  positive 
"  pain,  in  proportion  as  they  are  compelled  either  not 
"to  operate,  or  to  operate  too  much.  All  pleasure, thus, 
"  arises  from  the  free  play  of  our  faculties  and  capacities  ; 
"  all  pain  from  their  compulsory  repression  or  compul- 
"  sory  activity." 

All,  therefore,  depends  upon  what  is  meant  by  "  free" 
or  "  spontaneous,"  and  what  by  "  compulsory,"  activity. 
The  difference  cannot  be  that  which  the  words  suggest, 
the  presence  or  absence  of  will.  It  cannot  be  meant, 
that  pleasure  accompanies  the  process  when  wholly 
involuntary,  and  that  pain  begins  when  a  voluntary  ele- 
ment enters  into  the  exercise  of  the  sensitive  faculty. 
There  is  nothing  voluntary  in  the  agonies  of  the  rack, 
or  of  an  excruciating  bodily  disease  :  while,  in  the  case 
of  a  pleasure,  the  exercise  of  will,  in  the  only  mode 
in  which  it  can  be  exercised  on  a  feeling,  namely,  by 

♦  Lectures,  ii.  477. 


THEORT    OP   PLEASURE    AND    PAIN.  559 

voluntarily  attending  to  it,  instead  of  converting  it  from 
a  pleasure  into  a  pain,  often  greatly  heightens  the  plea- 
sure. This  doctrine,  therefore,  would  be  absurd,  nor  is 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  chargeable  with  it.  What  he  means 
by  "  spontaneous"  as  applied  to  the  exercise  of  our  capa- 
cities of  feeling,  we  gather  from  the  following  passage,* 
and  others  similar  to  it. 

"  Every  power,  all  conditions  being  supplied,  and  all 
"  impediments  being  removed,  tends,  of  its  proper  nature 
"  and  without  effort,  to  put  forth  a  certain  determinate 
"  maximum,  intensive  and  protensive,  of  free  energy. 
"  This  determinate  maximum  of  free  energy,  it,  there- 
"  fore,  exerts  spontaneously  :  if  a  less  amount  than  this 
*'  be  actually  put  forth,  a  certain  quantity  of  tendency 
"  has  been  forcibly  repressed  :  whereas,  if  a  greater  than 
"  this  has  been  actually  exerted,  a  certain  amount  of 
"  nisus  has  been  forcibly  stimulated  in  the  power.  The 
"  term  spontaneomly ,  therefore,  provides  that  the  exertion 
"  of  the  power  has  not  been  constrained  beyond  the 
"  proper  limit, — the  natural  maximum,  to  which,  if  left 
"  to  itself,  it  fre(4y  springs. — Again,  in  regard  to  the 
"  term  unimpeded, — this  stipulates  that  the  conditions 
*'  requisite  to  allow  this  spring  have  been  supplied,  and 
"  that  all  impediments  to  it  have  been  removed.  This 
"  postulates,  of  course,  the  presence  of  an  object." 

The  spontaneous  and  unimpeded  exercise  of  a  capacity 
means,  therefore,  it  would  appear,  the  exercise  which 
takes  place  when  "  all  conditions"  are  "  supplied,'  and 
"  all  impediments  removed."  Let  us  apply  this  to  a 
particular  case.  I  taste,  at  difierent  instants,  two  dif- 
ferent objects  ;  an  orange,  and  ihubarb.  In  both  cases, 
all  conditions  are  supplied;  the  object  is  present  and  in 
contact  with  my  organs ;  and  in  both  cases,  all  impedi- 
ments are  removed  to  the  unstrained  and  natural  action 
of  the  object  upon  my  gustatory  organs.  Yet  the  result 
is  in  one  case  a  pleasure,  in  the  other  a  sensation  of 
nauseousness.  On  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  theory,  it  ought, 
in  both  cases,  to  have  been  pleasure  :  for  in  neither  does 
*  Lectures,  ii.  441. 


560  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's 

anything  interfere  with  the  free  action  of  my  sense  of 
taste. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  can  scarcely  have  overlooked  this 
objection,  and  the  answer  which  he  may  be  supposed  to 
make,  is  that  in  the  case  of  the  rhubarb,  the  object  itself 
was  of  a  nature  to  disturb  the  gustative  faculty,  and 
exact  from  it  a  greater  degree  of  action  (or  a  less,  for  I 
would  not  undertake  to  say  w^hich)  than  is  exacted  by 
the  orange.  But  where  is  the  proof  of  this  ?  and  what, 
even,  does  the  assertion  mean  ?  A  greater  degree  of 
what  action  ?  Of  the  action  of  tasting  ?  If  so,  a  pain 
should  difler  from  a  pleasure  only  by  being  more  (or 
perhaps  less)  intense.  Is  the  action  that  is  meant,  some 
occult  process  in  the  organ  ?  But  what  ground  is  there 
for  affirming  that  there  is  more  action  of  any  kind,  on 
the  part  of  the  organ  or  the  sense  of  taste,  in  a  dis- 
agreeable savour  than  in  an  agreeable  one  ?  It  is  per- 
haps true  that  more  than  a  certain  quantity  of  action  is 
always  painful :  every  sensation  intensified  beyond  a 
certain  degree  may  become  a  pain.  But  the  converse 
proposition,  that  wherever  there  is  a  pain  there  is  an 
excess  of  action  (or  a  deficiency,  for  we  are  offered 
that  alternative),  I  know  of  no  reason  for  believing. 
Moreover,  if  admitted,  it  would  seem  to  involve  the 
consequence,  that  in  every  case  of  pain,  a  less  or  a  greater 
degree  of  the  cause  which  produces  it  is  pleasurable, 
which  is  certainly  not  true,  however  true  it  nia}^  be  tbat 
in  many  cases  of  organic  pleasure  (especially  tastes 
and  smells]  a  less  or  a  greater  quantity  of  the  substance 
which  produces  the  pleasure  is  either  insipid  or  posi- 
tively disagreeable. 

Our  author  is  more  than  half  aware  that  his  theory 
breaks  down  when  applied  to  pleasures  or  pains  that  are 
lieterogeneous  to  one  another ;  for  he  says,*  "  When  it 
"  is  required  of  us  to  explain  particularly  and  in  detail, 
"  why  the  rose,  for  example,  produces  this  sensation  of 
"  smell,  assaloetida  that  other,  and  so  forth,  and  to  say 
"  in  what  peculiar  action  does  the  perfect  or  pleasurable, 

*  Lectures,  ii.  495. 


THEORY    OF   PLEASURE    AND    PAIN.  561 

"  and  the  imperfect  or  painful,  activity  of  an  organ 
"  consist,  we  must  at  once  profess  our  ignorance."  He ' 
lays  the  responsibility  of  the  failure,  not  upon  his  theory, 
but  upon  the  general  inexplicability  of  ultimate  facts. 
"  But  it  is  the  same  with  all  our  attempts  at  explaining 
"  any  of  the  ultimate  phaenomena  of  creation.  In 
"  general,  we  may  account  for  much ;  in  detail,  we  can 
"  rarely  account  for  anything  :  for  we  soon  remount  to 
"  facts  which  lie  beyond  our  powers  of  analysis  and 
"  observation." 

This  appears  to  me  a  great  misconception,  on  our 
author's  part,  of  what  may  rightfully  be  demanded  from 
a  theorist.  He  is  not  entitled  to  frame  a  theory  from 
one  class  of  phaenomena,  extend  it  to  another  class  which 
it  does  not  fit,  and  excuse  himself  by  saying  that  if  we 
cannot  make  it  fit,  it  is  because  ultimate  facts  are  inex- 
plicable. Newton  did  not  proceed  in  this  manner  with 
the  theory  of  gravitation.  He  made  it  an  absolute  con- 
dition of  adopting  the  theory,  that  it  should  fit;  and 
when,  owing  to  incorrect  data,  he  could  not  make  it  fit 
perfectly,  he  abandoned  the  speculation  for  many  years. 
IF  the  smell  of  a  rose  and  the  smell  of  assafoetida  are 
ultimate  facts,  be  it  so  :  but  in  that  case,  it  is  useless 
setting  up  a  theory  to  explain  them.  If  we  do  propound 
a  theory,  we  are  bound  to  prove  all  it  asserts :  and 
this,  in  the  present  case,  is,  that  in  smelling  a  rose  the 
organ  is  in  "  perfect"  activity,  but  when  smelling  assa- 
foetida, in  "imperfect,"  which  is  either  greater  or  less 
than  perfect.  It  is  not  philosophical  to  assert  this,  and 
fall  back  upon  the  incomprehensibility  of  the  subject  as 
a  dispensation  from  proving  it.  What  is  a  hindrance 
to  proving  a  theory,  ought  to  be  a  hindrance  to  afiirm- 
ing  it. 

What  meaning,  in  fact,  can  be  attached  to  perfect 
and  imperfect  activity,  as  the  phrases  are  here  used? 
Perfection  or  imperlection  is  treated  as  a  question  of 
quantit}'^ ;  activity  is  called  perfect  when  there  is  exactly 
the  right  quantity,  imperfect  when  there  is  either  more 
or  less.    But  what  is  the  test  of  right  or  wrong  quantity, 

o  o 


B6S 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON  S 


except  the  pleasure  or  pain  attending-  it  ?  The  theory 
amounts  to  this,  that  pleasure  or  pain  is  felt,  according 
as  the  activity  is  of  the  amount  fitted  to  produce  the  one 
or  the  other.  In  this  futile  mode  of  explaining  the  phse- 
nomena  our  author  had  been  preceded  by  Aristotle,  one 
of  the  greatest  of  recorded  thinkers,  but  who  must  have 
been  more  than  human  if,  in  the  state  of  knowledge  and 
scientific  cultivation  in  his  time,  he  had  avoided  slips 
which  hardly  any  one,  even  now,  is  able  completely  to 
guard  against.  Aristotle's  theory,  which,  as  understood 
by  our  author,  differs  little  from  his  own,  is  presented  by 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  in  the  following  words  :*  "  When  a 
"  sense,  for  example,  is  in  perfect  health,  and  it  is  pre- 
"  sented  with  a  suitable  object  of  the  most  perfect  kind, 
"  there  is  elicited  the  most  perfect  energy,  which,  at 
"  every  instant  of  its  continuance,  is  accompanied  with 
"  pleasure.  The  same  holds  good  with  the  function  of 
"  Imagination,  Thought,  &c.  Pleasure  is  the  concomitant 
"  in  every  case  where  powers  and  objects  are  in  them- 
"  selves  perfect,  and  between  which  there  subsists  a 
"  suitable  relation."  The  conditions  whereon,  upon  this 
showing,  pleasure  depends,  are  the  healthiness  of  the 
sense,  and  the  perfection  of  the  object  presented  to  it. 
This  is  simply  making  the  fact  its  own  theory.  When 
is  a  sense  in  perfect  health,  and  its  object  perfect?  The 
function  of  a  sense  is  twofold ;  as  a  source  of  cognition, 
and  of  feeling.  If  the  perfection  meant  be  in  the  function 
of  cognition,  the  doctrine  that  pleasure  depends  on  this 
is  manifestly  erroneous  :  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
it  is  even  the  reverse  of  the  truth,  for  he  holds  that  the 
knowledge  given  by  an  act  of  sense,  and  the  feeling 
accompanying  it,  are  in  an  inverse  proportion  to  one 
another.  There  remains  the  supposition  that  the  per- 
fection, of  which  Aristotle  spoke,  was  perfection  not  in 
respect  of  cognition  but  of  feeling.  It  cannot,  however, 
consist  in  acuteness  of  feeling,  for  our  acutest  feelings  are 
pains.  What  then  constitutes  it  ?  Pleasurableness  of 
feeling  :  and  the  theory  only  tells  us,  that  pleasure  is  the 

*  Lectures,  ii.  452. 


THEORY   OF    PLEASURE   AND    PAIN.  563 

result  of  a  pleasurable  state  of  the  sense,  and  a  pleasure- 
giving  quality  in  the  object  presented  to  it.  Aristotle 
and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  did  not,  certainly,  state  the  doctrine 
to  themselves  in  this  manner ;  but  they  reduced  it  to 
this,  by  affirming  pleasure  or  pain  to  depend  on  the  per- 
fect or  imperfect  action  of  the  sense,  when  there  was  no 
criterion  of  imperfect  or  perfect  action  except  that  it 
produced  pain  or  pleasure. 

The  theory  of  our  author,  considered  as  a  resume  of 
the  universal  conditions  of  pleasure  and  pain,  being  so 
manifestly  inadequate,  this  is  not  the  place  for  sifting 
out  the  detached  fragments  of  valuable  thought  which 
are  disseminated  through  it.  Such  stray  truths  may  be 
gleaned  from  every  excursion  through  the  phaenomena 
of  human  nature  by  a  person  of  ability.  What  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  says  of  the  different  classes  of  mental  pleasures 
and  pains,  though  brief,  is  very  suggestive  of  thought. 
To  make  a  proper  use  of  the  hints  he  throws  out  towards 
an  explanation  of  the  pleasures  derived  from  sublimity 
and  beauty,  would  require  much  study,  and  a  wide  survey 
of  the  subject,  as  well  as  of  the  speculations  of  other 
thinkers  regarding  it.  The  question  has  no  direct  con- 
nexion with  any  other  of  those  discussed  in  the  present 
volume,  and  but  a  slight  one  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
merits  as  a  philosopher ;  since  the  brevity  with  which  he 
treats  it,  gives  ground  for  believing  that  he  had  not  be- 
stowed on  it  the  amount  of  thought  which  would  enable 
his  opinion  to  claim  the  rank  of  a  philosophic  theory. 


o  0  2 


564 


CHAPTEE  XXVI. 


ON  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

The  last  of  the  three  classes  of  mental  phaenomena,  that 
of  Conation,  in  other  words,  of  Desire  and  Will,  is  barely 
commenced  upon  in  the  last  pages  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's 
last  lecture  :  whether  it  be  that  in  the  many  years  during 
which  he  taught  the  class,  he  never  got  beyond  this 
point,  or  that  his  teaching  in  the  concluding  part  of  the 
course  was  purely  oral,  and  has  not  been  preserved.  Nor 
has  he,  in  any  of  his  writings,  treated  exprofcsso  of  this 
subject ;  though  doubtless  he  would  have  done  so,  had 
his  health  permitted  him  to  complete  the  Dissertations 
on  Eeid.  We  consequently  know  little  of  what  his 
sentiments  were  on  any  of  the  topics  comprised  in  this 
branch  of  Psychology,  except  the  vexata  qucestio  of  the 
Freedom  of  the  Will  ;  on  which  he  could  not  help  giving 
indications,  in  various  parts  of  his  works,  both  of  his 
opinion  and  of  the  reasons  on  which  he  grounded  it.  The 
doctrine  of  Free-will  was  indeed  so  fundamental  with  him, 
that  it  may  be  regarded  as  the  central  idea  of  his  system 
— the  determining  cause  of  most  of  his  philosophical 
opinions  ;  and,  in  a  peculiar  manner,  of  the  two  which 
are  most  completely  emanations  from  his  own  mind, 
the  Law  of  the  Conditioned,  and  his  singular  theory  of 
Causation.  He  breaks  ground  on  the  subject  at  the  very 
opening  of  his  Lectures,  in  his  introductory  remarks 
on  the  utility  of  1-he  study  of  Metaphysics.  He  puts 
in  a  claim  for  metaphysics,  grounded  on  the  free-will 
doctrine,  of  being  the  only  medium  "  through  which  our 
"  unassisted   reason  can  ascend  to  the  knowledge  of  a 


THE  rREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  565 

"  God."*  He  supports  this  position  by  a  line  of  argument 
which,  I  think,  must  be  startling  to  the  majority  of 
believers. 

"  The  Deity,"  he  says,  "is  not  an  object  of  imrae- 
"  diate  contemplation ;  as  existing  and  in  himself,  he  is 
"  beyond  our  reach ;  we  can  know  him  only  mediately 
*'  through  his  works,  and  are  only  warranted  in  assuming 
*'  his  existence  as  a  certain  kind  of  cause  necessary  to 
**  account  for  a  certain  state  of  things,  of  whose  reality  our 
"  faculties  are  supposed  to  inform  us.  The  affirmation  of 
"  a  God  being  thus  a  regressive  inference,  from  the  exis- 
"  tence  of  a  special  class  of  effects  to  the  existence  of  a 
"  special  character  of  cause,  it  is  evident,  that  the  whole 
**  argument  hinges  on  the  fact, — Does  a  state  of  things 
"  really  exist,  such  as  is  only  possible  through  the  agency 
"  of  a  Divine  Cause?  For  if  it  can  be  shown  that  such  a 
**  state  of  things  does  not  really  exist,  then,  our  inference 
"  to  the  kind  of  cause  requisite  to  account  for  it,  is 
"  necessarily  null. 

"  This  being  understood,  I  now  proceed  to  show  you 
*'  that  the  class  of  phsenomena  which  requires  that  kind 
*'  of  cause  we  denominate  a  Deity,  is  exclusively  given 
"  in  the  phsenomena  of  mind, — that  the  phsenomena  of 
"  matter,  taken  by  themselves  (you  will  observe  the  qua- 
"  lification,  taken  by  themselves)  so  far  from  warranting 
"  any  inference  to  the  existence  of  a  God,  would,  on  the 
"  contrary,  ground  even  an  argument  to  his  negation ; 
"  that  the  study  of  the  external  world,  taken  with,  and 
*'  in  subordination  to,  that  of  the  internal,  not  only  loses 
"  its  atheistic  tendency,  but,  under  such  subservience, 
"  may  be  rendered  conducive  to  the  great  conclusion 
"  from  which,  if  left  to  itself,  it  would  dissuade  us." 

The  reasoning  by  which  he  thinks  that  he  establishes 
this  position  runs  as  follows.  A  God  is  only  an  inference 
from  Nature ;  a  cause  assumed,  as  necessary  to  account 
for  phsenomena.  Now,  fate  or  necessity,  without  a  God, 
might  account  for  the  phsenomena  of  matter.  It  is  only 
as  man  is  a  Iree  intelligence,  that   to   account  for  his 

•  Lecturet*,  i.  25,  et  aeqq. 


S66  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

existence  requires  the  hypothesis  of  a  Creator  who  is  a 
free  intelligence.  If  our  feeling  of  liberty  is  an  illu- 
sion ;  if  our  intelligence  is  only  a  result  of  material 
organization ;  we  are  entitled  to  conclude  that  in  the 
universe  also,  the  phsenomena  of  intelligence  and  design 
are,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  products  of  brute  necessity- 
Existence  in  itself  being  unknown  to  us,  we  can  only 
infer  its  character  from  the  particular  order  presented  to 
us  within  the  sphere  of  our  experience,  which  in  the 
case  under  consideration  means  observation  of  our  own 
minds.  If,  therefore,  our  intelligence  is  produced  and 
bounded  by  a  blind  fate,  the  like  may  be  concluded  to 
be  true  of  the  Divine  Intelligence.  If,  on  the  contrary, 
intelligence  in  man  is  a  free  power,  independent  of 
matter,  we  may  legitimately  conclude  the  same  thing  of 
the  intelligence  manifested  in  the  universe.  Again,  there 
is  properly  no  God  at  all  unless  there  is  a  moral  Governor 
of  the  world.  "  Now,*  it  is  self  evident,  in  the  lirst 
"  place,  that  if  there  be  no  moral  world,  there  can  be  no 
"  moral  governor  of  such  a  world ;  and  in  the  second,  that 
"  we  have,  and  can  have,  no  ground  on  which  to  believe 
"  in  the  reality  of  a  moral  world,  except  in  so  far  as  we 
"  ourselves  are  moral  agents.  .  .  .  But  in  what  does 
"  the  character  of  man  as  a  moral  agent  consist  ?  Man 
"  is  a  moral  agent  only  as  he  is  accountable  for  his  ac- 
"  tions, — in  other  words,  as  he  is  the  object  ot  praise  or 
"  blame ;  and  this  he  is,  only  inasmuch  as  he  has  pre- 
"  scribed  to  him  a  rule  of  duty,  and  as  he  is  able  to  act, 
"  or  not  to  act,  in  conformity  with  its  precepts.  The 
"  possibility  of  morality  thus  depends  on  the  possibility 
*'  of  liberty ;  for  if  man  be  not  a  free  agent,  he  is  not  the 
"  author  of  his  actions,  and  has,  therefore,  no  responsi- 
"  bility,  no  moral  personality  at  all."t 

Fully  to  develop  all  the  just  criticisms  which  might 
be  made  on  this  single  thesis,  would  require  a  long 
chapter.     In  the  first  place,  the  practice  of  bribing  the 

*  Lectures,  i.  32,  33. 
t  See  also  a  passage  in  the  essay  on  the  Study  of  Mathematics,  Discus- 
sions, pp.  307,  30b. 


THp  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  567 

pupil  to  accept  a  metaphysical  dogma,  by  the  promise 
or  threat  that  it  affords  the  only  valid  argument  for  a 
foregoMe    conclusion — however    transcendently    impor- 
tant that  conclusion  may  be  thought  to  be — is  not  only 
repugnant  to  all  the  rules  of  philosophizing,  but  a  grave 
offence  against  the  morality  of  philosophic  enquiry.     The 
eager  attempts  of  almost  every  metaphysical  writer  to 
create  a  religious  prejudice  in  favour  of  the  theory  he 
patronizes,  are  a   very  serious  grievance  in  philosophy. 
If  I   could  permit    myself,   even    by   way  of  retort,  to 
follow  so  bad  an  example,  I  might  warn  the  defenders 
of  religion,  of  the  danger  of  sacrificing,  in  turn,  every 
one  of  its  evidences  to   some  other.     It   has   been  re- 
marked, with  truth,  that  there  is  not  one  of  the  received 
arguments  in   support  either  of  natural  religion  or  of 
revelation,  a  formal  condemnation  of  which  might  not 
be  extracted    from    the    writings   of  sincerely  reUgious 
thinkers.      I   am   far   from    imputing   this    to    them  as 
matter  of  blame :  the  rejection  of  what  the}'^  deem  bad 
arguments  in  a  good  cause  must  always  be  honourable  to 
them,  when  led  to  it  by  honestly  following  the  prompt- 
ings of  their  reason,  and  not  by  an  egotistic  preference 
for  their  own  special  modes  of  proof.     But,  looking  at 
the   question  as  one  of  prudence,  it   would  be  wise  in 
them,   whatever  else  they   give  up,  not  to  part  com- 
pany with  the  Design  argument.    For,  in  the  first  place, 
it  is  the  best ;  and  besides,  it  is  by  far  the  most  per- 
suasive.    It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  stronger  argu- 
ment in  favour  of  Theism,  than  that  the  eye  must  have 
been  made  by  one  who  sees,  and  the  ear  by  one  who 
hears.     If,  after  this,  it  pleases  Sir  W.  Hamilton  or  any 
other  person  to  say  that  unless  we  believe  in  free  will, 
the  Being  who  by  hypothesis  made  the  ear  and  the  eye 
is   no  God  ;  or  that  to  regard  the  goodness  of  (rod  as 
the  result  of  a  necessity,  which,  from  the  very  meaning 
of  a  First  Cause,  cau  only  be  a  necessity  of  his  own 
nature,   a  love  of  Good  which  is   part  of  himself  and 
inseparable  from  him,   is  denying  him  to   be  a  moral 
being;    tiiere   is  really    nothing   left   for   us  but,  with 


568  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

equal  positiveness,  to  aver  the  contrary :  for  the  two 
parties  will  never  be  able  to  agree  about  the  meaning 
of  terms. 

This  is  but  one  specimen  among  many  of  the  bad 
logic  which  pervades  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  attempt  to  show 
that  Theism  depends  on  the  reception  of  his  favourite 
doctrine.  He  proceeds,  throughout,  on  the  assumption 
that  the  falsely  called  Doctrine  of  Necessity*  is  the 
same  thing  with  Materialism.  He  treats  those  opinions 
as  precisely  equivalent.!  Yet  no  two  doctrines  can  be 
more  distinct.  E-eid,  an  enemy  of  both,  affirms  that 
Necessity,  "  far  from  being  a  direct  inference,"  "  can  re- 
ceive no  support  from"  Materialism.  |  It  may  be  true, 
nevertheless,  that  Materialists  are  always  or  i^^enerally 
Necessitarians  ;  and  it  is  not  denied  that  many  Necessi- 
tarians are  Materialists :  but  nearlj'  all  the  theologians 
of  the  Reformation,  beginning  with  Luther,  and  the  en- 
tire series  of  Calvinistic  divines  represented  by  Jonathan 
Edwards,  are  proofs  that  the  most  sincere  Spiritualists 
may  consistently  hold  the  doctrine  of  so-called  Necessity. 
Of  such  Spiritualists  there  is  an  illustrious  example  in 
Leibnitz,  to  say  nothing  of  Condillac§  or  Brown.  They 
believe  man  to  be  a  spiritual  being,  not  dependent  on 
Matter,  but  yet,  in  respect  of  his  actions  as  iu  all  other 
respects,  subject  to  the  law  of  Causation :  his  volitions 
not  being  self-caused,  but  determined  by  spiritual  ante- 
cedents [e.g.  desires,    associations   of  ideas,   &c.,    all   of 

*  Botli  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  Mr.  Mansel  sometimes  call  it  by  the 
fairer  name  of  Determinism.  But  both  of  them,  when  they  come  to  close 
quarters  with  the  doctrine,  in  general  call  it  either  Necessity,  or,  less  ex- 
cusably. Fatalism.  The  truth  is,  that  the  assailants  of  the  doctrine  cannot 
do  without  the  associations  engendered  by  the  double  meaning  of  the 
word  Necessity,  which,  in  this  application,  signifies  only  invariability,  but 
in  its  common  employment,  compulsion.  Vide  System  of  Logic,  Book  vi. 
chap.  2. 

t  "  The  atheist  who  holds  matter  or  necessity  to  be  the  original  principle 
"  of  all  that  is."  (Lectures  i.  26,37.)  "Those  who  do  not  allow  that  mind 
"  is  matter — who  hold  that  there  is  in  man  a  principle  of  action  superior 
"  to  the  determinations  of  a  physical  necessity,  a  brute  or  blind  fate." 
(Ibid.  p.  133.)     And  the  entire  argument  in  page  31  of  the  same  volume. 

X  Reid's  Works,  Hamilton's  edition,  p.  635. 

§  That  Condillac  was  a  Spiritualist,  is  shown  by  the  chapter  on  the  Soul, 
which  stands  as  the  first  chapter  of  his  Art  de  Penser. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  569 

which  are  spiritual  if  the  mind  is  spiritual)  in  such  sort 
that  when  the  antecedents  are  the  same,  the  volitions 
will  always  be  the  same.  But  to  confound  necessity 
with  Materialism,  though  an  historical  and  psychological 
error,  is  indispensable  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  argument, 
which  depends  for  all  its  plausibility  on  the  picture  he 
draws  of  a  Grod  subject  to  a  "  brute  necessity"  of  a 
purely  material  character.  For  if  the  necessity  predi- 
cated of  human  actions  is  not  a  material,  but  a  spiritual 
necessity ;  if  the  assertion  that  the  virtuous  man  is  vir- 
tuous necessarily,  only  means  that  he  is  so  because  he 
dreads  a  departure  from  virtue  more  than  he  dreads  any 
personal  consequence  ;  there  is  nothing  absurd  or  invi- 
dious in  taking  a  similar  view  of  the  Deity,  and  believing 
that  he  is  necessitated  to  will  what  is  good,  by  the  love 
of  good  and  detestation  of  evil  which  are  in  his  own 
nature. 

There  is  also  at  the  root  of  our  author's  argument 
another  logical  error — that  of  inferring  that  whatever  is 
given  by  observation  and  analysis  as  a  law  of  human 
intelligence,  must  be  supposed  to  be  an  absolute  law  ex- 
tending to  tlie  Divine.  He  says,  truly,  that  the  Divine 
Intelligence  is  but  an  assumption,  to  account  for  the 
phsenomena  of  the  universe ;  and  that  we  can  only  be 
warranted  in  referring  the  origin  of  those  phsenomena 
to  an  Intelligence,  by  analogy  to  the  effects  of  human 
intellect.  But  can  this  analogy  be  carried  up  to  com- 
plete identity  in  conditions  and  modes  of  action  between 
the  human  and  the  Divine  intelligence  ?  Does  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  draw  this  inference  in  any  other  case?  On 
the  contrary,  he  holds  us  bound  to  believe  that  the  Deity, 
whether  as  Will  or  as  Intelligence,  is  Absolute — unre- 
stricted by  any  conditions  j  though,  as  such,  neither 
knowable  nor  conceivable  by  us.  And  though  I  do  not 
acknowledge  the  obligation  of  believing  what  can  neither 
be  known  nor  conceived,  as  little  can  it  be  admitted,  that 
the  Divine  Will  cannot  be  free  unless  ours  is  so ;  any 
more  than  that  the  Divine  Intelligence  cannot  know  the 
truths  of  geometry  by  direct  intuition,   because  we  are 


570  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

obliged  to  mount  laboriously  up  to  them  through  the 
twelve  books  of  Euclid. 

So  much  for  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  attempt  to  prove  that 
one  who  disbelieves  free-will,  has  no  business  to  believe 
in  a  God.  Let  us  now  consider  his  view  of  the  doctrine 
itself,  and  of  the  evidence  for  it. 

His  view  of  the  controversy  is  peculiar,  but  harmo- 
nizes with  his  Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned,  which 
seems  indeed  to  have  been  principally  suggested  to  him 
by  the  supposed  requirements  of  this  question.  He  is  of 
opinion  that  Free-wiil  and  Necessity  are  both  incon- 
ceivable. Free-will,  because  it  supposes  volitions  to  ori- 
ginate without  cause  i^  because  it  affirms  an  absolute  com- 
mencement, which,  as  we  are  aware,  our  author  deems 
it  impossible  for  the  human  mind  to  conceive.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  mind  is  equally  unable  to  conceive  an 
infinite  regress ;  a  chain  of  causation  going  back  to  all 
eternity.  Both  the  one  and  the  other  theory  thus  in- 
volve difficulties  insurmountable  by  the  human  faculties. 
But,  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  so  olten  tuld  us,  the  incon- 
ceivability of  a  thing  by  us,  is  no  proof  that  it  is  objec- 
tively impossible  by  the  laws  of  the  universe ;  on  the 
contrary,  it  often  happens  that  both  sides  of  an  alterna- 
tive are  alike  incomprehensible  to  us,  while  Irom  their 
nature  we  are  certain  that  the  one  or  the  other  must  be 
true.  Such  an  alternative,  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton, exists  between  the  contlicting  doctrines  of  Free-will 

*  Sir  W.  Hamilton  thinks  it  a  fair  statement  of  tiie  Free-will  doctrine, 
that  it  supposes  our  volitions  to  be  uncaused.  But  the  "  Inquirer"  (p.  45) 
considers  this  a  misstatement,  and  thinks  the  real  free-will  doctrine  to  be 
that  "  I"  am  the  cause,  i  prefer  the  other  language,  as  being  more  con- 
sistent with  the  use  of  the  word  cause  in  other  cases.  If  we  take  the 
word,  we  must  take  the  acknowledged  Law  of  Causation  along  with  it, 
viz.,  that  a  cause  which  is  the  same  in  every  respect,  is  always  followed  by 
the  same  efi'ects.  But  on  the  free-will  theory,  the  "  I"  is  the  same,  and 
all  the  other  conditions  the  same,  and  yet  the  effect  may  not  only  be  diffe- 
rent, but  contrary.  For  instead  of  saying  that  "  1"  am  the  cause,  the 
'■  Inquirer"  should  at  least  say,  some  state  or  mode  of  me,  which  is  diffe- 
rent when  the  effect  is  different :  though  what  state  or  mode  this  could  be, 
unless  it  were  a  will  to  will  (the  notion  so  justly  ridiculed  by  Hobbes),  it  is 
difficult  to  imagine.  I  persist,  therefore,  in  saying,  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
that,  on  the  free-will  doctrine,  volitions  are  emancipated  from  causation 
altogether. 


THE  FREEDOM  OP  THE  WILL.  571 

and  Necessity.  By  the  law  of  Excluded  Middle,  one  or 
other  of  them  must  be  true ;  and  inconceivability,  as 
common  to  both,  not  operating  more  against  one  than 
against  the  other,  does  not  operate  against  either.  The 
balance,  therefore,  must  turn  in  favour  of  the  side  for 
which  there  is  positive  evidence.  In  favour  of  Free-  will 
we  have  the  distinct  testimony  of  consciousness  ;  perhaps 
directly,  though  of  this  he  speaks  with  some  appearance 
of  doubt  ;*  but  at  all  events,  indirectly,  freedom  being 
implied  in  tlie  consciousness  of  moral  responsibility.  As 
there  is  no  corresponding  evidence  in  favour  of  the  other 
theory,  the  Free-will  doctrine  must  prevail.  "  Howf 
"  the  will  can  possibly  be  free  must  remain  to  us,  under 
"  the  present  limitation  of  our  faculties,  wholly  incom- 
"  prehensible.  We  cannot  conceive  absolute  commence- 
"  ment  ;  we  cannot,  therefore,  conceive  a  iree  volition. 
"  But  as  little  can  we  conceive  the  alternative  on  which 
*'  liberty  is  denied,  on  which  necessity  is  affirmed.  And 
"  in  favour  of  our  moral  nature,  the  fact  that  we  are  free 
"  is  given  us  in  the  consciousness  of  an  uncompromising 
"  law  of  Duty,  in  the  consciousness  of  our  moral  account- 
"  ability;  and  this  fact  of  liberty  cannot  be  redargued 
"  on  the  ground  that  it  is  incomprehensible,  for  the 
"  doctrine  of  the  Conditioned  proves,  against  the  neces- 
"  sitarian,  that  something  may,  nay  must,  be  true,  of 
"  which  the  mind  is  wholly  unable  to  construe  to  itself 
"  the  possibility,  whilst  it  shows  that  the  objection  of 
"  incomprehensibility  applies  no  less  to  the  doctrine  of 
"  fatalism  than  to  the  doctrine  of  moral  freedom." 

The  inconceivability  of  the  Free-will  doctrine  is  main- 
tained by  our  author,  not  only  on  the  general  ground 
just  stated,  of  our  incapacity  to  conceive  an  absolute 
commencement,  but  on  the  further  and  special  ground, 
that  the  will  is  determined  by  motives.  In  rewriting 
the  preceding  passage  lor  the  Appendix  to  his  "  Discus- 
sions," he  made  the  following  addition  to  it 4  "  A  de- 
•'  lermimation  by  motives  cannot,  to  our  understanding, 

*  Foot-notes  to  Eeid,  pp.  o99,  602.  624. 
t  Lectures,  ii.  412,  413.  J  Appendix  to  Discussions,  pp.  624,  626. 


572  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

"  escape  from  necessitation.  Nay,  were  we  even  to 
"  admit  as  true,  what  we  cannot  think  as  possible, 
"  still  the  doctrine  of  a  motiveless  volition  would  be 
"  only  casualism ;  and  the  free  acts  of  an  indifferent, 
*'  are,  morally  and  rationally,  as  worthless  as  the  pre- 
"  ordered  passions  of  a  determined  will.*  How,  there- 
"  fore,  I  repeat,  moral  liberty  is  possible  in  man  or  God, 
"  we  are  utterly  unable  speculatively  to  understand. 
"  But  .  .  .  the  scheme  of  freedom  is  not  more  inconceiv- 
"  able  than  the  scheme  of  necessity.  For  whilst  fatalism 
*'  is  a  recoil  from  the  more  obtrusive  inconceivability  of 
'^  an  absolute  commencement,  on  the  fact  of  which  com- 
"  mencement  the  doctrine  of  liberty  proceeds ;  the  fatalist 
"  is  shown  to  overlook  the  equal,  but  less  obtrusive,  in- 
"  conceivability  of  an  infinite  non-commencement,  on  the 
"  assertion  of  which  non-commencement  his  own  doc- 
"  trine  of  necessity  must  ultimately  rest."  It  rests  on 
no  such  thing,  if  he  believes  in  a  First  Cause,  which  a 
Necessitarian  may.  What  is  more,  even  if  he  does  not 
believe  in  a  First  Cause,  he  makes  no  "  assertion  of  non- 
commencement  ;"  he  only  declines  to  make  an  assertion 
of  commencement ;  and,  therefore,  is  not  in  the  position 
of  asserting  what  is  inconceivable  :  which,  however,  as 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  perpetually  declaring,  is  a  position 
perfectly  tenable,  and  the  position  he  avowedly  chooses 
for  himself  on  this  very  subject.  But  to  resume  the 
quotation :  "  As  equally  unthinkable,  the  two  counter, 
"  the  two  one-sided,  schemes  are  thus  theoretically 
"  balanced.  But,  practically,  our  consciousness  of  the 
"  moral  law,  which,  without  a  moral  liberty  in  man, 
"  would  be  a  mendacious  imperative,   gives  a  decisive 

*  To  the  same  effect  in  another  passage  :  "  That,  though  inconceivable, 
"  a  motiveless  volition  would,  if  conceived,  be  conceived  as  morally  worth- 
"  less,  only  shows  our  impotence  more  clearly,"  (Appendix  to  Discussions, 
pp.  614,  615.)  And  in  a  foot-note  to  E-eid  (p.  6u2),  "  Is  the  person  an 
"  original  undetermined  cause  of  the  determination  of  his  will  ?  If  he  be 
"  not,  then  he  is  not  a  free  agent,  and  the  scheme  of  Necessity  is  admitted. 
"  If  he  be,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  the  possibility  of 
"  this  ;  and,  in  the  second,  if  the  fact,  though  inconceivable,  be  allowed,  it 
"  is  impossible  to  see  how  a  cause,  undetermined  by  any  motive,  can  be  a 
•"  rational,  moral,  and  accuuiitable  cause." 


THE    FREEDOM    OF  THE    WILL.  57-3 

"  preponderance  to  the  doctrine  of  freedom  over  the  doc- 
"  trine  of  fate.  We  are  free  in  act,  if  we  are  account- 
"  able  for  our  actions." 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  of  opinion  that  both  sides  are 
alike  unsuccessful  in  repelling  each  other's  attacks.  The 
arguments  against  both  are,  he  thinks,  to  the  human 
faculties,  irrefutable.  "  The  champions*  of  the  opposite 
"  doctrines  are  at  once  resistless  in  assault  and  impotent 
**  in  defence.  Each  is  hewn  down,  and.  appears  to  die 
"  under  the  home  thrusts  of  his  adversary ;  but  each  again 
"  recovers  life  from  the  very  death  of  his  antagonist,  and, 
"  to  borrow  a  simile,  both  are  like  the  heroes  in  Valhalla, 
"  ready  in  a  moment  to  amuse  themselves  anew  in  the 
"  same  bloodless  and  interminable  conflict.  The  doctrine 
"  of  Moral  Liberty  cannot  be  made  conceivable,  for  we 
"  can  only  conceive  the  determined  and  the  relative.  As 
"  already  stated,  all  that  can  be  done  is  to  show,  1°.  That, 
"  for  \hefact  of  Liberty,we  have  immediatelyor  mediately, 
"  the  evidence  of  Consciousness  ;  and  2°.  That  there  are 
"  among  the  phaenomena  of  mind,  many  facts  which  we 
"  must  admit  as  actual,  but  of  whose  possibility  we  are 
"  wholly  unable  to  form  any  notion.  I  may  merely 
"  observe  that  the  fact  of  Motion  can  be  shown  to  be 
"  impossible,  on  grounds  not  less  strong  than  those  on 
"  which  it  is  attempted  to  dis])rove  the  fact  of  Liberty." 
These  "  grounds  no  less  strong"  are  the  mere  paralogisms 
which  we  examined  in  a  recent  chapter,  and  with  regard 
to  which  our  author  showed  so  surprising  a  deficiency 
in  the  acuteness  and  subtlety  to  be  expected  from  the 
general  quality  of  his  mind. 

Conformably  to  these  views,  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  in  his 
foot-notes  on  Keid,  promptly  puts  an  extinguisher  on 
several  of  that  philosopher's  arguments  against  the  doc- 
trine of  so-called  Necessity.  When  Reid  affirms  that 
Motives  are  not  causes — that  they  may  influence  to  action, 
but  do  not  act.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  observes  :t  "  If  Motives 
"  influence  to  action,  they  must  co-operate  in  producing  a 

*  Foot-note  on  Eeid,  p.  602.  t  Ibid.  p.  603. 


574  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

"  certain  effect  upon  the  agent ;  and  the  determination  to 
"  act,  and  to  act  in  a  certain  manner,  is  that  effect.  They 
"  are  thus,  on  Eeid's  own  view,  in  this  relation,  causes,  and 
"  efficient  causes.  It  is  of  no  consequence  in  the  argument 
"  whether  motives  be  said  to  determine  a  man  to  act,  or 
"  to  influence  (that  is,  to  determine)  him  to  determine 
"  himself  to  act."*  This  is  one  of  the  neatest  specimens 
in  our  author's  writings  of  a  fallacy  cut  clean  through 
by  a  single  stroke. 

Again,  when  Reid  says  that  acts  are  often  done  without 
any  motive,  or  when  there  is  no  motive  for  preferring  the 
means  used,  rather  than  others  by  which  the  same  end 
might  have  been  attained,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  asks,f  "  Can 
"  we  conceive  any  act  of  which  there  was  not  a  suflScient 
"  cause  or  concourse  of  causes  why  the  man  performed 
"it  and  no  other?  If  not,  call  this  cause,  or  these 
"  concauses,  the  motive,  and  there  is  no  longer  a 
"  dispute." 

Reid  asks,  "  Is  there  no  such  thing  as  wilfulness, 
caprice,  or  obstinacy  among  mankind  ?"  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton, e  contra  :\  "  But  are  not  these  all  tendencies,  and 
"  fatal  tendencies,  to  act  or  not  to  act  ?  By  contradistin- 
"  guishing  such  tendencies  from  motives  strictly  so  called, 
"  or  rational  impulses,  we  do  not  advance  a  single  step 
"  towards  rendering  liberty  comprehensible." 

According  to  Reid,  the  determination  is  made  by  the 
man,  and  not  by  the  motive.  "  But,"  asks  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,^  "was  the  man  determined  by  no  motive  to 
"  that  determination?  Was  his  specific  volition  to  this 
"  or  to  that  without  a  cause  ?  On  the  supposition  that 
"  the  sum  of  influences  (motives,  dispositions,  and  ten- 
"  dencies)  to  volition  A,  is  equal  to  12,  and  the  sum  of 
"  influences  to  counter-volition  B  equal  to  8 — can  we 
"  conceive  that  the  determination  of  volition  A  should 
"  not  be  necessary? — We  can  only  conceive  the  volition 
"  B  to  be  determined  by  supposing  that  the  man  creates 

*  To  the  same  effect  see  Discussions,  Appendix  on  Causality,  p.  614. 

t  Foot-note  to  Eeid,  p.  609. 

J  Ibid.  p.  610.  §  Ibid.  p.  611. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  575 

"  (calls  from  non-existence  into  existence)  a  certain  sup- 
**  pletnent  of  influences.  But  this  creation  as  actual,  or 
"  in  itself,  is  inconceivable,  and  even  to  conceive  the 
"  possibility  of  this  inconceivable  act,  we  must  sup- 
"  pose  some  cause  by  which  the  man  is  determined  to 
"  exert  it.  We  thus,  in  thought,  never  escape  determina- 
"  tion  and  necessity.  It  will  be  observed  that  I  do  not 
"  consider  this  inability  to  the  notion,  any  disproof  of  the 
^*  fact  of  Free-will."  Nor  is  it:  but  if,  as  our  author  so 
strongly  inculcates,  "  every*  effort  to  bring  the  fact  of 
"  liberty  within  the  compass  of  our  conceptions  only 
"  results  in  the  substitution  in  its  place  of  some  more 
"  or  less  disguised  form  of  necessity,"  it  is  a  strong 
indication  that  some  form  of  necessity  is  the  opinion 
naturally  suggested  by  our  collective  experience  of 
life.t 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  having  thus,  as  is  often  the  case 
(and  it  is  one  of  the  best  things  he  does),  saved  his  oppo- 
nents the  trouble  of  answering  his  friends,  his  doctrine 
is  left  resting  exclusively  on  the  supports  which  he  has 
himself  provided  for  it.  In  examining  them,  let  us  place 
ourselves,  in  the  first  instauce,  completely  at  his  point  of 
view,  and  concede  to  him  the  coequal  inconceivability 
of  the  conflicting  hypotheses,  an  uncaused  commence- 
ment, and  an  infinite  egress.  But  this  choice  of  incon- 
ceivabilities is  not  offered  to  us  in  the  case  of  volitions 
only.  We  are  held,  as  he  not  only  admits  but  contends, 
to  the  same  alternative  in  all  cases  of  causation  what- 
soever. But  we  find  our  way  out  of  the  difficulty,  in 
other  cases,  in  quite  a  different  manner.  In  the  case  of 
every  other  kind  of  fact,  we  do  not  elect  the  hypothesis 
that  the  event  took  place  without  a  cause :  we  accept 

*  Lectures,  i.  34. 
t  So  difficult  is  it  to  escape  from  this  fact,  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  himself 
says  (Lectures,  i.  188),  "  Voluntary  conation  is  a  faculty  which  can  only 
"  be  determined  to  energy  through  a  pain  or  pleasure — through  an  estimate 
"  of  the  relative  worth  of  objects."  If  I  am  determined  to  prefer  inno- 
cence to  the  satisfaction  of  a  particular  desire,  through  an  estimate  of  the 
relative  worth  of  innocence  and  of  the  gratification,  can  this  estimate, 
while  unchanged,  leave  me  at  liberty  to  choose  the  gratification  in  prefe- 
rence to  innocence? 


576  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

the  other  supposition,  that  of  a  regress,  not  indeed  to 
infinity,  but  either  generally  into  the  region  of  the  Un- 
knowable, or  back  to  an  Universal  Cause,  regarding 
which,  as  we  are  only  concerned  with  it  in  respect  of 
attributes  bearing  relation  to  what  it  preceded,  and  not 
as  itself  preceded  by  anything,  we  can  afford  to  consider 
this  reference  as  ultimate. 

Now,  what  is  the  reason,  which,  in  the  case  of  all 
things  within  the  range  of  our  knowledge  except  voli- 
tions, makes  us  choose  this  side  of  the  alternative  ? 
Why  do  we,  without  scruple,  register  all  of  them  as  de- 
pending on  causes,by  which  (to  use  our  author's  language) 
they  are  determined  necessarily,  though,  in  believing 
this,  we,  according  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  believe  as  utter 
an  inconceiv.ability  as  if  we,  supposed  them  to  take  place 
without  a  cause?  Apparently  it  is  because  the  causa- 
tion hypothesis,  inconceivable  as  he  may  think  it,  pos- 
sesses the  advantage  of  having  experience  on  its  side. 
And  how  or  by  what  evidence  does  experience  testify  to 
it?  Not  by  disclosing  any  nexus  hetween  the  cause  and 
the  eflect,  any  Sufficient  Reason  in  the  cause  itself  why 
the  effect  should  follow  it.  No  philosopher  now  makes 
this  supposition,  and  Sir  W.  Hamilton  positively  dis- 
claims it.  What  experience  makes  known,  is  the  fact  of 
an  invariable  sequence  between  every  event  and  some 
special  combination  of  antecedent  conditions,  in  such 
sort  that  wherever  and  whenever  that  union  of  antece- 
dents exists,  the  event  does  not  fail  to  occur.  Any  must 
in  the  case,  any  necessity,  other  than  the  unconditional 
universality  of  the  fact,  we  know  nothing  of.  Still, 
this  k  posteriori  "  does,"  though  not  confirmed  by  an  a 
priori  "  must,"  decides  our  choice  between  the  two  incon- 
ceivables,  and  leads  us  to  the  belief  that  every  event 
within  the  phsenomenal  universe,  except  human  volitions, 
is  determined  to  take  place  by  a  cause.  Now,  the  so-called 
Necessitarians  demand  the  application  of  the  same 
rule  of  judgment  to  our  volitions.  They  maintain 
that  there  is  the  same  evidence  ior  it.  Tiiey  affirm,  as 
\  a  truth  of  experience,  that  volitions  do,  in  point  of  fact. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  577 

follow  determinate  moral  antecedents  with  the  same  <' 
uniformity,  and  (when  we  have  sufficient  knowledge  of  ) 
the  circumstances)  with  the  same  certainty,  as  physical  i 
effects  follow  their  physical  causes.  These  moral  ante- 
cedents are  desires,  aversions,  habits,  and  dispositions, 
combined  with  outward  circumstances  suited  to  call  those 
internal  incentives  into  action.  All  these  asrain  are 
effects  of  causes,  those  of  tliem  which  are  mental  being 
consequences  of  education,  and  of  other  moral  and  phy- 
sical influences.  This  is  what  Necessitarians  affirm  :  and 
they  court  every  possible  mode  in  which  its  truth  can  be 
verified.  They  test  it  by  each  person's  observation  of 
his  own  volitions.  They  test  it  by  each  person's  obser- 
vation of  the  voluntary  actions  of  those  with  whom  he 
comes  into  contact ;  and  by  the  power  which  every  one 
has  of  foreseeing  actions,  with  a  degree  of  exactness 
proportioned  to  his  previous  experience  and  knowledge 
of  the  agents,  and  with  a  certainty  often  quite  equal  to 
that  with  which  we  predict  the  commonest  physical  events. 
They  test  it  further,  by  the  statistical  results  of  the  ob- 
servation of  human  being's  actiuor  in  numbers  sufficient  to 
eliminate  the  influences  which  operate  only  on  a  few,  and 
which  on  a  large  scale  neutralize  one  another,  leaving  the 
total  result  about  the  same  as  if  the  volitions  of  the  whole 
mass  had  been  ati'ected  by  such  only  of  the  determining 
causes  as  were  common  to  them  all.  In  cases  of  this 
description  the  results  are  as  uniform,  and  may  be  as 
accurately  foretold,  as  in  any  physical  enquiries  in  which 
the  effect  depends  upon  a  multiplicity  of  causes.  The 
cases  in  which  volitions  seem  too  uncertain  to  admit  of 
being  confidently  predicted,  are  those  in  which  our 
knowledge  of  the  influences  antecedently  in  operation  is 
so  incomplete,  that  with  equally  imperfect  data  there 
would  be  the  same  uncertainty  in  the  predictions  of  the 
astronomer  and  the  chemist.  On  these  grounds  it  is 
contended  that  our  choice  between  the  conflicting  incon- 
ceivables  should  be  the  same  in  the  case  of  volitions 
as  of  all  other  pha?nomena ;  we  must  reject  equally  in 
both  cases  the  hypothesis  of  spontaneousness,  and  con- 

p  p 


578  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

sider  them  all  as  caused.  A  volition  is  a  moral  effect, 
which  follows  the  corresponding  moral  causes  as  cer- 
tainly and  invariably  as  physical  effects  follow  their  phy- 
sical causes.  Whether.it  must  do  so,  I  acknowledge 
myself  to  be  entirely  ignorant,  be  the  phsenomenon  moral 
or  physical ;  and  I  condemn,  accordingly,  the  word 
Necessity  as  applied  to  either  case.  All  I  know  is,  that 
it  always  does* 

This  argument  from  experience  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
passes  unnoticed,  but  urges,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
question,  the  argument  from  Consciousness.  We  are 
conscious,  he  affirms,  either  of  our  freedom,  or  at  all 
events  (it  is  odd  that,  on  his  theory,  there  should  be  any 
doubt)  of  something  which  implies  freedom.  If  this  is 
true,  our  internal  consciousness  tells  us  that  we  have  a 
power,  which  the  whole  outward  experience  of  the  human 
race  tells  us  that  we  never  use.  This  is  surely  a  very 
unfortunate  predicament  we  are  in,  and  a  sore  trial  to 
the  puzzled  metaphysician.  Philosophy  is  far  from 
having  so  easy  a  business  before  her  as  our  author 
thinks  :  the  arbiter  Consciousness  is  by  no  means 
invoked  to  turn  the  scale  between  two  equally  balanced 
difficulties  ;  on  the  contrary,  she  has  to  sit  in  judgment 
between  herself  and  a  complete  induction  from  expe- 
rience. Consciousness,  it  will  probably  be  said,  is  the 
best  evidence ;  and  so  it  would  be,  if  we  were  always 
certain  what  is  Consciousness.  But  while  there  are 
so  many  varying  testimonies  respecting  this ;  when  Sir 
W.    Hamilton  can  himself  say,f  "  many  philosophers 

*  The  "  Inquirer"  accuses  this  argument  (p.  45)  of  "  gratuitously  as- 
suming that  free-will  is  inconsistent  with  foreknowledge."  This  is  a 
misapprehension.  That  vexed  question  is  not  even  approached  in  the  text. 
All  that  is  maintained  is  that  the  possibility  to  human  intelligence,  of 
predicting  human  actions,  implies  a  constancy  of  observed  sequence  be- 
tween the  same  antecedents  and  the  same  consequents,  which,  in  the  case 
of  all  events  except  volitions,  is  deemed  to  justify  the  assertion  of  a  law 
of  nature  (called  in  the  language  of  the  free- will  philosophers  Necessity). 
This  constancy  of  sequence  between  motives,  mental  dispositions,  and 
actions,  is  a  strong  reason  against  admitting  free-will  as-  a  fact ;  but  I 
have  not  meddled,  and  do  not  intend  to  meddle,  with  the  metaphysical 
question  whether  a  contingent  event  can  be  foreknown. 
t  Dissertations  on  Reid,  p.  749. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  579 

"  have  attempted  to  establish,  on  the  principles  of 
"  common  sense,  propositions  which  are  not  original 
"  data  of  consciousness,  while  the  orisrinal  data  of  con- 
"  sciousness  from  which  these  propositions  were  derived, 
"  and  to  which  they  owed  all  their  necessity  and  truth, 
"  these  same  philosophers  were  (strange  to  say)  not 
"  disposed  to  admit ;"  when  M.  Cousin  and  nearly  all 
Germany  find  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute  in  Conscious- 
ness, Sir  W.  Hamilton  thinking  them  utterly  repugnant 
to  it ;  when  philosophers,  for  many  generations,  fancied 
that  they  had  Abstract  Ideas — that  they  could,  conceive 
a  triangle  which  was  neither  equilateral,  isosceles,  nor 
scalene,*  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  all  other  people 
now  consider  to  be  simply  absurd ;  with  all  these  con- 
flicting opinions  respecting  the  things  to  which  Con- 
sciousness testifies,  what  is  the  perplexed  inquirer  to 
think?  Does  all  philosophy  end,  as  in  our  author's 
opinion  Hume  believed  it  to  do,  in  a  persistent  contra- 
diction between  one  of  our  mental  faculties  and  another  ? 
We  shall  find,  there  is  a  solution,  which  relieves  the 
human  mind  from  this  embarrassment :  namely,  that  the  ' 
question  to  which  experience  says  yes,  and  that  to  which 
consciousness  says  no,  are  different  questions. 

Let  us  cross-examine  the  alleged  testimony  of  con- 
sciousness. And,  first,  it  is  left  in  some  uncertainty  by 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  whether  Consciousness  makes  only 
one  deliverance  on  the  subject,  or  two  :  whether  we  are 
conscious  only  of  moral  responsibility,  in  which  free-will 

*  "  Does  it  not  require,"  says  Locke  (Essay  on  the  Human  Under- 
standing, Book  iv.  chap.  7,  sect.  9),  "  some  pains  and  skQl  to  form  the 
"  general  idea  of  a  triangle  (which  yet  is  none  of  the  most  abstract,  com- 
"  prehensive  and  difficult?)  for  it  must  be  neither  oblique  nor  rectangle, 
"  neither  equilateral,  equicrural,  nor  scalene ;  but  all  and  none  of  these  at 
"  once.  In  efEect,  it  is  something  imperfect,  that  cannot  exist ;  an  idea 
"  wherein  some  parts  of  several  diflEerent  and  inconsistent  ideas  are  put 
"  together."  Yet  this  union  of  contradictory  elements  such  a  phUosopner 
as  Locke  was  able  to  fancy  that  he  conceived.  I  scarcely  know  a  more 
striking  example  of  the  tendency  of  the  human  mind  to  believe  that  things 
can  exist  separately  because  they  can  be  separately  named ;  a  tendency 
strong  enough,  in  this  case,  to  make  a  mind  Uke  Locke's  believe  itself 
to  be  conscious  of  that  which  by  the  laws  of  mind  cannot  be  a  subject  of 
consciousness  to  any  one. 

p  p  2 


580  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

is  implied,  or  are  directly  conscious  of  free-will.  In  his 
Lectures,  Sir  W.  Hamilton  speaks  only  of  the  first.  In 
the  notes  on  Reid,  which  were  written  subsequently,  he 
seems  to  affirm  both,  but  the  latter  of  the  two  in  a 
doubtful  and  hesitating  manner  :  so  difficult,  in  reality, 
does  he  find  it  to  ascertain  with  certainty  what  it  is  that 
Consciousness  certifies.  But  as  there  are  many  who 
maintain  with  a  confidence  far  greater  than  his,  that 
we  are  directly  conscious  of  free-will,*  it  is  necessary  to 
examine  that  question. 

To  be  conscious  of  free-will,  must  mean,  to  be  conscious, 
before  I  have  decided,  that  I  am  able  to  decide  either 
w^ay.  Exception  may  be  taken  in  limine  to  the  use  of 
the  word  consciousness  in  such  an  application.  Con- 
sciousness tells  me  what  I  do  or  feel.  But  what  I  am 
able  to  do,  is  not  a  subject  of  consciousness.  Conscious- 
ness is  not  prophetic ;  we  are  conscious  of  what  is,  not 
of  what  will  or  can  be.  We  never  know  that  we  are 
able  to  do  a  thing,  except  from  having  done  it,  or  some- 
thing equal  and  similar  to  it.  We  should  not  know 
that  we  were  capable  of  action  at  all,  if  we  had  never 
acted.  Having  acted,  we  know,  as  far  as  that  experience 
reaches,  how  we  are  able  to  act ;  and  this  knowledge, 
when  it  has  become  familiar,  is  often  confounded  with, 
and  called  by  the  name  of,  consciousness.  But  it  does 
not  derive  any  increase  of  authority  from  being  mis- 
named ;  its  truth  is  not  supreme  over,  but  depends  on, 
experience.  If  our  so-called  consciousness  of  what  we 
are  able  to  do  is  not  borne  out  by  experience,  it  is  a 

*  Mr.  Mansel,  among  others,  makes  the  assertion  in  the  broadest  form 
it  is  capable  of,  saying,  "  In  every  act  of  volition,  I  am  fully  conscious 
"  that  I  can  at  this  moment  act  in  either  of  two  ways,  and  that,  all  the 
"  antecedent  phsenomena  being  precisely  the  same,  I  may  determine  one 
"  way  to-day  and  another  way  to-morrow."  (Prolegomena  Logica,  p.  152.) 
Yes,  though  the  antecedent  phsenomena  remain  the  same  :  but  not  if  my 
judgment  of  the  antecedent  phsenomena  remains  the  same.  If  my  con- 
duct changes,  either  the  external  inducements  or  my  estimate  of  them 
must  have  changed. 

Mr.  Mansel  (as  I  have  already  observed)  goes  so  far  as  to  maintain  that 
our  immediate  intuition  of  Power  is  given  iis  by  the  ego  producing  its  own 
volitions,  not  by  its  volitions  producing  bodily  movements  (pp.  139-140, 
and  161). 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  581 

delusion.  It  has  no  title  to  credence  but  as  an  inter- 
pretation of  experience,  and  if  it  is  a  false  interpretation, 
it  must  give  way.* 

But  this  conviction,  whether  termed  consciousness  or 
only  belief,  that  our  will  is  free — what  is  it  ?  Of  what 
are  we  convinced  ?  I  am  told  that  whether  I  decide  to 
vdo  or  to  abstain,  I  feel  that  I  could  have  decided  the 

*  In  answer  to  the  statement  that  what  I  am  able  to  do  is  not  a  subject 
of  consciousness,  Mr.  Alexander  says  (pp.  22  et  seqq.),  "'Perhaps  it  is  not; 
"  but  what  Ifeel  I  am  able  to  do  is  surely  a  subject  of  consciousness.  .  .'  . 
"  As  to  '  consciousness  is  not  prophetic,  we  are  conscious  of  what  is,  not 
"  of  what  will  or  can  be,'  it  seems  enough  to  say  that  if  we  are  conscidps 
"  of  a  free  force  of  volition  continuously  inherent  in  us,  we  are  conscious  of 
"  what  is."  If  we  can  be  conscious  of  a  force,  and  can  feel  an  ability,  inde- 
pendently of  any  present  or  past  exercise  thereof,  the  fact  has  nothing 
similar  or  analogous  in  all  the  rest  of  our  nature.  We  are  not  conscious 
of  a  muscular  force  continuously  inherent  in  us.  If  we  were  born  with  a 
cataract,  we  are  not  conscious,  previous  to  being  couched,  of  our  ability  to 
see.  We  should  not  feel  able  to  walk  if  we  had  never  walked,  nor  to  think, 
if  we  had  never  thought.  Ability  and  force  are  not  real  entities,  which 
can  be  felt  as  present  when  no  efi'ect  follows ;  they  are  abstract  names  for 
the  happening  of  the  eflfect  on  the  occurrence  of  the  needful  conditions,  or 
for  our  expectation  of  its  happening.  It  is  of  course  possible  that  this 
may  be  all  wrong,  and  that  there  may  be  a  concrete  real  thing  called  ability, 
of  which  consciousness  discloses  to  us  the  positive  existence  in  this  one 
case,  though  there  is  no  evidence  of  it  in  any  other.  But  it  is  surely,  to 
say  the  least,  much  more  probable  that  we  mistake  for  consciousness  our 
habitual  affirmation  to  ourselves  of  an  acquired  knowledge  or  belief.  This 
very  common  mistake  may  have  escaped  the  notice  of  Mr.  Alexander,  who 
(p.  23)  considers  knowledge  to  be  the  same  thing  as  direct  consciousness  ! 
but  it  is  a  po3sibility  which  it  will  not  do  to  overlook,  when  one  takes  for 
one's  standard  (p.  25)  the  "  general  consciousness  of  the  race ;"  espe- 
cially if,  with  Mr.  Alexander,  one  restricts  "the  race"  to  those  who  are  not 
philosophers,  on  the  ground  that  no  philosopher  "  unless  he  be  one  of  a 
thousand,"  can  see  or  feel  anything  that  is  inconsistent  with  his  precon- 
ceived opinion.  If  this  be  the  normal  effect  of  philosophy  on  the  human 
mind ;  if,  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  times  against  one,  the  effect  of 
cultivating  our  power  of  mental  discrimination  is  tc  pervert  it;  let  us  close 
our  books,  and  accept  Hodge  as  a  better  authority  in  metaphysics  than 
Locke  or  Kant,  and,  I  suppose,  in  astronomy  than  Newton,  An  appeal 
to  consciousness,  however,  to  be  of. any  value,  must  be  to  those  who  have 
formed  a  habit  of  sifting  their  consciousness,  and  distinguishing  what 
they  perceive  or  feel  from  what  they  infer;  to  those  who  can  be  made  to 
understand  that  they  do  not  see  the  sun  move:  and,  to  have  attained  this 
power  of  criticising  their  own  consciousness  on  metaphysical  subjects, 
they  must  have  reflected  on  those  subjects,  in  a  manner  and  degree  which 
quite  entitle  any  one  to  the  name  of  a  philosopher. 

Mr.  Alexander  denies  that  the  belief  that  I  was  free  to  act  can  possibly 
be  tested  by  experience  a  posteriori,  since  experience  only  tells  me  the  way 
in  which  I  did  act,  and  says  nothing  about  my  having  been  able  to  act 
otherwise.    Mr.  Alexander's  idea  of  the  conditions  of  proof  by  experience 


582  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

other  way.  I  ask  my  consciousness  what  I  do  feel,  and 
I  find,  indeed,  that  I  feel  (or  am  convinced)  that  I  could, 
and  even  should,  have  chosen  the  other  course  if  I  had 
preferred  it,  that  is,  if  I  had  liked  it  better;  but  not 
that  I  could  have  chosen  one  course  while  I  preferred 
the  other.  When  I  say  preferred,  I  of  course  include 
with  the  thing  itself,  all  that  accompanies  it.  I  know 
that  I  can,  because  I  know  that  I  often  do,  elect  to  do 
on3  thing,  when  I  should  have  preferred  another  in  itself, 
apart  from  its  consequences,  or  from  a  moral  law  which 
it  violates.  And  this  preference  for  a  thing  in  itself, 
abstractedly  from  its  accompaniments,  is  often  loosely 
described  as  preference  for  the  thing.  It  is  this  unpre- 
cise  mode  of  speech  which  makes  it  not  seem  absurd  to 
say  that  I  act  in  opposition  to  my  preference ;  that  I  do 
one  thing  when  I  would  rather  do  another ;  that  my  con- 
is  not  a  very  enlarged  one.  Suppose  that  my  experience  of  myself  afforded 
two  undeniable  cases,  alike  in  all  the  mental  and  physical  antecedents,  in 
one  of  which  cases  I  acted  in  one  way,  and  in  the  other  in  the  direct 
opposite  :  there  would  then  be  proof  by  experience  that  I  had  been  able 
to  act  either  in  the  one  way  or  in  the  other.  It  is  by  experience  of  this 
sort  I  learn  that  I  can  act  at  all,  viz.,  by  finding  that  an  event  takes  place 
or  not,  according  as  (other  circumstances  being  the  same)  a  volition  of 
mine  does  or  does  not  take  place.  But  when  this  power  of  my  volitions 
over  my  actions  has  become  a  familiar  fact,  the  knowledge  of  it  is  so  con- 
stantly present  to  my  mind  as  to  be  popularly  called,  and  habitually  con- 
founded with,  consciousness.  And  the  supposed  power  of  myself  over  my 
volitions,  which  is  termed  Free-will,  though  it  cannot  be  a  fact  of  con- 
sciousness, yet  if  true,  or  even  if  believed,  would  similarly  work  itself  into 
our  inmost  knowledge  of  ourselves,  in  such  a  manner  as  to  be  mistaken 
for  consciousness. 

It  would  hardly  be  worth  while  to  notice  a  pretended  inconsistency  dis- 
covered by  Mr.  Alexander  between  what  is  here  said,  and  my  recognition 
in  a  former  work  of  a  "practical  feeling  of  Free  Will" — "a  feeling  of  Moral 
Freedom  which  we  are  conscious  of,"  if  Mr.  Alexander  had.  not  inferred 
from  it  that  I  "  was  at  one  time  conscious"  of  what  I  now,  for  the  con- 
venience of  my  argument,  deny  to  be  a  subject  of  consciousness.  Mr. 
Alexander  himself  quotes  the  words  in  which  I  spoke  of  this  pi-actical 
feeling  of  free-will  as  not  one  of  free-will  at  all,  in  a  sense  implying  the 
theory;  and  took  pains  to  describe  what  it  really  is,  expressly  declaring 
our  feeling  of  moral  freedom  to  be  a  feeling  of  our  being  able  to  modify 
our  own  character  if  we  wish.  When  I  applied  the  words  feeling  and 
consciousness  to  this  acquired  knowledge,  I  did  not  use  those  terms  in 
their  strict  psychological  meaning,  there  being  no  necessity  for  doing  so 
in  that  place ;  but,  agreeably  to  popular  usage,  extended  them  to  (what 
there  is  no  appropriate  scientific  name  for)  the  whole  of  our  familiar  and 
intimate  knowledge  concerning  ourselves. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  583 

science  prevails  over  my  desires — as  if  conscience  were 
not  itself  a  desire — the  desire  to  do  right.  Take  any- 
alternative  :  say  to  murder  or  not  to  murder.  I  am 
told,  that  if  I  elect  to  murder,  I  am  conscious  that  I 
could  have  elected  to  abstain:  but  am  I  conscious  that 
I  could  have  abstained  if  my  aversion  to  the  crime,  and 
niy  dread  of  its  consequences,  had  been  weaker  than  the 
temptation  ?  If  I  elect  to  abstain :  in  what  sense  am  I 
conscious  that  I  could  have  elected  to  commit  the  crime? 
Only  if  I  had  desired  to  commit  it  with  a  desire  stronger 
than  my  horror  of  murder;  not  with  one  less  strong. 
When  we  think  of  ourselves  hypothetically  as  having 
acted  otherwise  than  we  did,  we  always  suppose  a  diffe- 
rence in  the  antecedents :  we  picture  ourselves  as  having 
known  something  that  we  did  not  know,  or  not  known 
something  that  we  did  know ;  which  is  a  difierence  in  the 
external  inducements ;  or  as  having  desired  something, 
or  disliked  something,  more  or  less  than  we  did;  which 
is  a  difference  in  the  internal  inducements.* 

In  refutation  of  this  it  is  said,  that  in  resisting  a 
desire,  I  am  conscious  of  making  an  effort ;  that  after  I 
have  resisted,  I  have  the  remembrance  of  having  made 
an  effort ;  that  "  if  the  temptation  was  long  continued, 
"  or  if  I  have  been  resistinjj  the  strong:  will  of  another, 
**  I  am  as  sensibly  exhausted  by  that  effort,  as  after  any 

*  Preferring,  as  lie  says,  a  homely  instance,  Mr.  Alexander  supposes 
(p.  29),  that  a  man  puts  his  finger  to  his  nose,  and  asks,  "  Is  not  he  con- 
"  scious  of  being  able  to  touch  at  will  either  the  right  side  of  his  nose  or 
''  the  left  ?  Having  touched,  let  us  say,  the  left  side,  is  he  not  conscious 
"  he  could  have  touched  the  right  side  had  he  so  willed  it,  and  conscious 
"  that  he  coidd  have  so  willed,  chosen,  or  preferred  ?"  Mr.  Alexander's 
naif  expectation  that  his  opponent's  answer  will  be  diflFerent  because  of  the 
futility  of  the  example,  reminds  one  of  the  asinus  Buridani.  I  should,  on 
the  supposition  which  he  makes,  be  aware  (I  will  not  say  conscious)  that 
I  could  have  touched  the  right  side  had  I  so  willed  it ;  and  aware  that  I 
could,  and  even  should,  have  so  willed,  chosen,  and  preferred,  if  there  had 
existed  a  sufficient  inducement  to  make  me  do  so,  and  not  otherwise.  If 
any  one's  consciousness  tells  him  that  he  could  have  done  so  without  an 
inducement,  or  in  opposition  to  a  stronger  inducement,  I  venture  to  ex- 
press my  opinion,  in  words  borrowed  from  Mr.  Alexander,  that  it  is  not 
his  "  veritable  consciousness."  I  will  not  imitate  Mr.  Alexander  in  call- 
ing it  a  "  fraudulent  substitute  palmed  upon  him"  by  his  philosophical 
system. 


584  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

"  physical  exertion  I  ever  made :"  and  it  is  added,  "  If 
"  my  volition  is  wholly  determined  by  the  strongest 
"  present  desire,  it  will  be  decided  without  any  effort. 
"  .  .  .  .  When  the  greater  weight  goes  down,  and  the 
"  lesser  up,  no  effort  is  needed  on  the  part  of  the  scales."* 
It  is  implied  in  this  argument,  that  in  a  battle  between 
contrary  impulses,  the  victory  must  always  be  decided  in 
a  moment ;  that  the  force  which  is  really  the  strongest, 
and  prevails  ultimately,  must  prevail  instantaneously. 
The  fact  is  not  quite  thus  even  in  inanimate  nature: 
the  hurricane  does  not  level  the  house  or  blow  down  the 
tree  without  resistance ;  even  the  balance  trembles,  and 
the  scales  oscillate  for  a  short  time,  when  the  difference 
of  the  weights  is  not  considerable.  Far  less  does  victory 
come  without  a  contest  to  the  strongest  of  two  moral, 
or  even  two  vital  forces,  whose  nature  it  is  to  be  never 
fixed,  but  always  flowing,  quantities.  In  a  struggle 
between  passions,  there  is  not  a  single  instant  in  which 
there  does  not  pass  across  the  mind  some  thought,  which 
adds  strength  to,  or  takes  it  from,  one  or  the  other  of 
the  contending  powers.  Unless  one  of  them  was,  from 
the  beginning,  out  of  all  proportion  stronger  than  the 
other,  some  time  must  elapse  before  the  balance  adjusts 
itself  between  forces  neither  of  which  is  for  any  two 
successive  instants  the  same.  During  that  interval  the 
agent  is  in  the  peculiar  mental  and  physical  state  which 
we  call  a  conflict  of  feelings :  and  we  all  know  that  a 
conflict  between  strong  feelings  is,  in  an  extraordinary 
degree,  exhaustive  of  the  nervous  energies. f  The  con- 
sciousness of  effort,  which  we  are  told  of,  is  this  state 
of  conflict.  The  author  I  am  quoting  considers  what 
he  calls,  I  think  improperly,  an  effort,  to  be  only  on  one 

*  The  Battle  of  the  Two  Philosophies,  pp.  13,  14. 
t  The  writer  I  quote  says,  "  Balancing  one  motive  against  another  is 
not  willing  but  judging."  The  state  of  mind  I  am  speaking  of  is  by  no 
means  a  state  of  judging.  It  is  an  emotional,  not  an  intellectual  state, 
and  the  judging  may  be  finished  before  it  commences.  If  there  were  any 
indispensable  act  of  judging  in  this  stage,  it  could  only  be  judging  which 
of  the  two  pains  or  pleasures  was  the  greatest  :  and  to  regard  this  as  the 
operative  force  would  be  conceding  the  point  in  favour  of  Necessi- 
tarianism. 


THE    FREEDOM    OF   THE   WIliL.  585 

side,  because  he  represents  to  himself  the  conflict  as 
taking  place  between  me  and  some  foreign  power,  which 
I  conquer,  or  by  which  I  am  overcome.  But  it  is 
obvious  that  "  1"  am  both  parties  in  the  contest ;  the 
conflict  is  between  me  and  myself;  between  (tor  in- 
stance) me  desiring  a  pleasure,  and  me  dreading  self- 
reproach.  What  causes  Me,  or,  if  you  please,  my  Will, 
to  be  identified  with  one  side  rather  than  with  the 
other,  is  that  one  of  the  Me's  represents  a  more  perma- 
nent state  of  my  feelings  than  the  other  does.  After  the 
temptation  has  been  yielded  to,  the  desiring  "  I"  will 
come  to  an  end,  but  the  conscience-stricken  "  I "  may 
endure  to  the  end  of  life. 

I  therefore  dispute  altogether  that  we  are  conscious  of 
being  able  to  act  in  opposition  to  the  strongest  present 
desire  or  aversion.  The  difference  between  a  bad  and  a 
good  man  is  not  that  the  latter  acts  in  opposition  to  his 
strongest  desires ;  it  is  that  his  desire  to  do  right,  and 
his  aversion  to  doing  wrong,  are  strong  enough  to  over- 
come, and  in  the  case  of  perfect  virtue,  to  silence,  any 
other  desire  or  aversion  which  may  conflict  with  them. 
It  is  because  this  state  of  mind  is  possible  to  human 
nature,  that  human  beings  are  capable  of  moral  govern- 
ment :  and  moral  education  consists  in  subjecting  them 
to  the  discipline  which  has  most  tendency  to  bring  them 
into  this  state.  The  object  of  moral  education  is  to 
educate  the  will:  but  the  will  can  only  be  educated 
through  the  desires  and  aversions;  by  eradicating  or 
weakening  such  of  them  as  are  likeliest  to  lead  to  evil ; 
exalting  to  the  highest  pitch  the  desire  of  right  conduct 
and  the  aversion  to  wrong  ;  cultivating  all  other  desires 
and  aversions  of  which  the  ordinary  operation  is  auxiliary 
to  right,  while  discountenancing  so  immoderate  an  in- 
dulgence of  them,  as  might  render  them  too  powerful  tx> 
be  overcome  by  the  moral  sentiment,  when  they  chance 
to  be  in  opposition  to  it.  The  other  requisites  are,  a 
clear  intellectual  standard  of  right  and  wrong,  that  moral 
desire  and  aversion  may  act  in  the  proper  places,  and 
such  general  mental  habits  as  shall  prevent  moral  consi- 


586  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

derations  from  being  forgotten  or  overlooked,  in  cases  to 
which  they  are  rightly  applicable. 

Rejecting,  then,  the  figment  of  a  direct  consciousness 
of  the  freedom  of  the  will,  in  other  words,  our  ability  to 
will  in  opposition  to  our  strongest  preference  ;  it  remains 
to  consider  whether,  as  affirmed  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  a 
freedom  of  this  kind  is  implied  in  what  is  called  our 
consciousness  of  moral  responsibility.  There  must  be 
something  very  plausible  in  this  opinion,  since  it  is  shared, 
even  by  Necessitarians.  Many  of  these — in  particular 
Mr.  Owen  and  his  followers — from  a  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  volitions  are  eftects  of  causes,  have  been  led  to 
deny  Imman  responsibilty.  I  do  not  mean  that  they  de- 
nied moral  distinctions.  Few  persons  have  had  a  stronger 
sense  of  right  and  wrong,  or  been  more  devoted  to  the 
things  they  deemed  right.  What  they  denied  was  the 
rightfulness  of  inflicting  punishment.  A  man's  actions, 
they  said,  are  the  result  of  his  character,  and  he  is  not 
the  author  of  his  own  character.  It  is  made /or  him, 
not  hy  him.  There  is  no  justice  in  punishing  him  for 
what  he  cannot  help.  We  should  try  to  convince  or 
persuade  him  that  he  had  better  act  in  a  different  man- 
ner; and  should  educate  all,  especially  the  young,  in  the 
habits  and  dispositions  which  lead  to  well-doing :  though 
how  this  is  to  be  effected  without  any  use  whatever  of 
punishment  as  a  means  of  education,  is  a  question  they 
have  failed  to  resolve.  The  confusion  of  ideas,  which 
makes  the  subjection  of  human  volitions  to  the  law  of 
Causation  seem  inconsistent  with  accountability,  must 
thus  be  very  natural  to  the  human  mind;  but  this  may 
be  said  of  a  thousand  errors,  and  even  of  some  merely 
verbal  fallacies.  In  the  present  case  there  is  more  than 
a  verbal  fallacy,  but  verbal  fallacies  also  contribute  their 
part. 

What  is  meant  by  moral  responsibility  ?  Eesponsi- 
bility  means  punishment.  When  we  are  said  to  have 
the  feeling  of  being  morally  responsible  for  our  actions, 
the  idea  of  being  punished  for  tliem  is  uppermost  m  the 
speaker's  mind.     But  the  feeling  of  liability  to  punish- 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  587 

ment  is  of  two  kinds.  It  may  mean,  expectation  that  if 
we  act  in  a  certain  manner,  punishment  will  actually  be 
inflicted  upon  us,  by  our  fellow  creatures  or  by  a 
Supreme  Power.  Or  it  may  only  mean,  knowing  that 
we  shall  deserve  that  infliction. 

The  first  of  these  cannot,  in  any  correct  meaning  of 
the  term,  be  designated  as  a  consciousness.  If  we  believe, 
that  we  shall  be  punished  for  doing  wrong,  it  is  because 
the  belief  has  been  taught  to  us  by  our  parents  and 
tutors,  or  by  our  religion,  or  is  generally  held  by  those 
who  surround  us,  or  because  we  have  ourselves  come  to 
the  conclusion,  by  reasoning,  or  from  the  experience  of 
life.  This  is  not  Consciousness.  And,  by  whatever  name 
it  is  called,  its  evidence  is  not  dependent  on  any  theory 
of  the  spontaneousness  of  volition.  The  punishment 
of  guilt  in  another  world  is  believed  with  undoubting  con- 
viction by  Turkish  fatalists,  and  by  professed  Christians 
who  are  not  only  Necessitarians,  but  believe  that  the 
majority  of  mankind  were  divinely  predestined  from  all 
eternity  to  sin  and  to  be  punished  for  sinning.  It 
is  not,  therefore,  the  belief  that  we  shall  be  made  ac- 
countable, which  can  be  deemed  to  require  or  presuppose 
the  free-will  hypothesis;  it  is  the  belief  that  we  ought 
so  to  be ;  that  we  are  justly  accountable ;  that  guilt 
deserves  punishment.  It  is  here  that  issue  is  joined 
between  the  two  opinions. 

In  discussing  it,  there  is  no  need  to  postulate  any 
theory  respecting  the  nature  or  criterion  of  moral  dis- 
tinctions. It  matters  not,  for  this  purpose,  whether  the 
right  and  wrong  of  actions  depends  on  the  consequences 
they  tend  to  produce,  or  on  an  inherent  quality  of  the 
actions  themselves.  It  is  indifferent  whether  we  are 
utilitarians  or  anti-utilitarians ;  whether  our  ethics  rest 
on  intuition  or  on  experience.  It  is  sufficient  if  we  be- 
lieve that  there  is  a  difference  between  right  and  wrong, 
and  a  natural  reason  for  preferring  the  former;  that 
people  in  general,  unless  when  they  expect  personal 
benefit  from  a  wrong,  naturally  and  usually  prefer  what 
they  think   to  be  right:    whether  because  we  are  all 


588  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

dependent  for  what  makes  existence  tolerable,  upon  the 
right  conduct  of  other  people,  while  their  wrong  conduct 
is  a  standing  menace  to  our  security,  or  for  some  more 
mystical  and  transcendental  reason.  Whatever  be  the 
\  cause,  we  are  entitled  to  assume  the  fact :  and  its  conse- 
I  quence  is,  that  whoever  cultivates  a  disposition  to  wrong, 
j  .  places  his  mind  out  of  sympathy  with  the  rest  of  his 
\  fellow  creatures,  and  if  they  are  aware  of  his  disposition, 
becomes  a  natural  object  of  their  active  dislike.  He  not 
only  forfeits  the  pleasure  of  their  good  will,  and  the 
benefit  of  their  good  offices,  except  when  compassion  for 
the  human  being  is  stronger  than  distaste  towards  the 
wrongdoer ;  but  he  also  renders  himself  liable  to  what- 
ever they  may  think  it  necessary  to  do  in  order  to  pro- 
tect themselves  against  him  ;  which  may  probably  include 
punishment,  as  such,  and  will  certainly  involve  much 
that  is  equivalent  in  its  operation  on  himself.  In  this 
way  he  is  certain  to  be  made  accountable,  at  least  to  his 
fellow  creatures,  through  the  normal  action  of  their 
natural  sentiments.  And  it  is  well  worth  consideration, 
whether  the  practical  expectation  of  being  thus  called  to 
account,  has  not  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the  internal 
feeling  of  being  accountable ;  a  feeling,  assuredly,  which 
is  seldom  found  existing  in  any  strength  in  the  absence 
of  that  practical  expectation.  It  is  not  usually  found 
that  Oriental  despots,  who  cannot  be  called  to  account 
by  anybody,  have  much  consciousness  of  being  morally 
accountable.  And  (what  is  still  more  significant)  in  so- 
cieties in  which  caste  or  class  distinctions  are  really 
strong — a  state  so  strange  to  us  now,  that  we  seldom 
realize  it  in  its  full  force — it  is  a  matter  of  daily  expe- 
rience that  persons  may  show  the  strongest  sense  of  moral 
accountability  as  regards  their  equals,  who  can  make 
them  accountable,  and  not  the  smallest  vestige  of  a 
similar  teeling  towards  their  inferiors  who  cannot. 

This  does  not  imply  that  the  feeling  of  accountability, 
even  when  proportioned  very  exactly  to  the  chance  of 
being  called  to  account,  is  a  mere  interested  calcula- 
tion,  having  nothing  more  in  it   than    an  expectation 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  589 

and  tiread  of  external  punishment.  Wlien  pain  has 
long  been  thought  of  as  a  consequence  of  a  given  fact, 
the  fact  becomes  wrapt  up  in  associations  which  make  it 
painful  in  itself,  and  cause  the  mind  to  shrink  from  it 
even  when,  in  the  particular  case,  no  painful  consequences 
are  apprehended :  just  as  the  dislike  to  spending  money, 
which  grows  up  while  money  can  ill  be  spared,  may  be 
an  absorbing  passion  after  the  possessor  has  grown  so 
rich  that  the  expenditure  would  not  really  cause  him  the 
most  trifling  inconvenience.  On  this  familiar  principle 
of  association  it  is  abundantly  certain  that  even  if  wrong 
meant  merely  what  is  forbidden,  a  disinterested  detesta- 
tion of  doing  wrong  would  naturally  grow  up,  and  might 
become,  in  its  strength  and  promptitude,  and  in  the 
immediateness  of  its  action,  without  reflection  or  ulterior 
purpose,  undistinguishable  from  any  of  our  instincts  or 
natural  passions. 

Another  fact,  which  it  is  of  importance  to  keep  in 
view,  is,  that  the  highest  and  strongest  sense  of  the 
worth  of  goodness,  and  the  odiousness  of  its  opposite, 
is  perfectly  compatible  with  even  the  most  exaggerated 
form  of  Fatalism.  Suppose  that  there  were  two  peculiar 
breeds  of  human  beings, — one  of  them  so  constituted  from 
the  beginning,  that  however  educated  or  treated,  nothing 
could  prevent  them  from  always  feeling  and  acting  so  as 
to  be  a  blessing  to  all  whom  they  approached ;  another, 
of  such  original  perversity  of  nature  that  neither  educa- 
tion nor  punishment  could  inspire  them  with  a  feeling  of 
duty,  or  prevent  them  from  being  active  in  evil  doing. 
Neither  of  these  races  of  human  beings  would  have  free- 
will; yet  the  former  would  be  honoured  as  demigods, 
while  the  latter  would  be  regarded  and  treated  as  noxious 
beasts :  not  punished  perhaps,  since  punishment  would 
have  no  effect  on  them,  and  it  might  be  thought  wrong 
to  indulge  the  mere  instinct  of  vengeance :  but  kept 
carefully  at  a  distance,  and  killed  like  other  dangerous 
creatures  when  there  was  no  other  convenient  way  of 
being  rid  of  them.  We  thus  see  that  even  under  the 
utmost  possible  exaggeration  of  the  doctrine  of  Neces- 


590  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

sity,  the  distinction  between  moral  good  and  evil  in  con- 
duct would  not  only  subsist,  but  would  stand  out  in  a 
more  marked  manner  than  now,  when  the  good  and  the 
wicked,  however  unlike,  are  still  regarded  as  of  one 
common  nature. 

An  opponent  may  say,  this  is  not  a  distinction  between 
moral  good  and  evil ;  and  I  am  far  from  intending  to  beg 
the  question  against  him.  But  neither  can  he  be  per- 
mitted to  beg  the  question,  by  assuming  that  the  dis- 
tinction is  not  moral  because  it  does  not  imply  free-will. 
The  reality  of  moral  distinctions,  and  the  freedom  of  our 
volitions,  are  questions  independent  of  one  another. 
My  position  is,  that  a  human  being  who  loves,  disinte- 
restedly and  consistently,  his  fellow  creatures  and 
whatever  tends  to  their  good,  who  hates  with  a  vigorous 
hatred  what  causes  them  evil,  and  whose  actions  corre- 
spond in  character  with  these  feelings,  is  naturally, 
necessarily,  and  reasonably  an  object  to  be  loved,  admired, 
sympathized  with,  and  in  all  ways  cherished  and  en- 
couraged by  mankind  ;  while  a  person  who  has  none  of 
these  qualities,  or  so  little,  that  his  actions  continually 
jar  and  conflict  with  the  good  of  others,  and  that  for 
purposes  of  his  own  he  is  ready  to  inflict  on  them  a 
great  amount  of  evil,  is  a  natural  and  legitimate  object 
of  their  fixed  aversion,  and  of  conduct  conformable 
thereto :  and  this  whether  the  will  be  free  or  not,  and 
even  independently  of  any  theory  of  the  difference  be- 
tween right  and  wrong  ;  whether  right  means  productive 
of  happiness,  and  wrong  productive  of  misery,  or  right 
and  wrong  are  intrinsic  qualities  of  the  actions  them- 
selves, provided  only  we  recognise  that  there  is  a  dif- 
ference, and  that  the  difference  is  highly  important.  What 
I  maintain  is,  that  this  is  a  sufficient  distinction  between 
moral  good  and  evil :  sufficient  for  the  ends  of  society 
and  sufficient  for  the  individual  conscience: — that  we  need 
no  other  distinction  ;  that  if  there  be  any  other  distinc- 
tion, we  can  dispense  with  it ;  and  that,  supposing  acts  in 
themselves  good  or  evil  to  be  as  unconditionally  deter- 
mined from   the  beginning  of  things  as  if  they  were 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  591 

phaenomena  of  dead  matter,  still,  if  the  determination 
from  the  beginning  of  things  has  been  that  they  shall  take 
place  through  my  love  of  good  and  hatred  of  evil,  I  am 
a  proper  object  of  esteem  and  affection,  and  if  that  they 
shall  take  place  through  my  love  of  self  and  indifference 
to  good,  I  am  a  fit  object  of  aversion  which  may  rise  to 
abhorrence.  And  no  competently  informed  person  will 
deny  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  those  who  have  held  this 
creed  have  had  as  stroni^  a  feeling,  both  emotional  and 
practical,  of  moral  distinctions,  as  any  other  people.* 

But  these  considerations,  however  pertinent  to  the 
subject,  do  not  touch  the  root  of  the  difficulty.  The 
real  question  is  one  of  justice — the  legitimacy  of  retri- 
bution, or  punishment.  On  the  theory  of  Necessity 
(we  are  told)  a  man  cannot  help  acting  as  he  does ;  and 
it  cannot  be  just  that  he  should  be  punished  for  what 
he  cannot  help. 

Not  if  the  expectation  of  punishment  enables  him  to 
help  it,  and  is  the  only  means  by  which  he  can  be  enabled 
to  help  it  ? 

To  say  that  he  cannot  help  it,  is  true  or  false,  accord- 
ing to  the  qualification  with  which  the  assertion  is  accom- 
panied.    Supposing  him  to  be  of  a  vicious  dispositibu, 

*  Mr.  Alexander  draws  a  woful  picture  of  the  pass  which  mankind 
would  come  to,  if  belief  in  so-called  Necessity  became  general.  All  "  our 
current  moralities"  would  come  to  be  regarded  "as  a  form  of  superstition," 
all  "  moral  ideas  as  illusions,"  by  which  "  it  is  plain  we  get  rid  of  them  as 
"  motives  :"  consequently  the  internal  sanction  of  conscience  would  no 
longer  exist.  "  The  external  sanctions  remain,  but  not  quite  as  they  were. 
"  That  important  section  of  them  which  rests  on  the  moral  approval  or 
"  disapproval  of  our  fellow-men  has,  of  course,  evaporated :'  and  "  in  • 
"  virtue  of  a  deadly  moral  indifference."  the  remaining  external  sanctions 
"  might  come  to  be  much  more  languidly  enforced  than  as  now  they  are," 
and  the  progressive  degradation  would  in  a  sufficient  time  "succeed  in  re- 
"  producing  the  real  original  gorilla."  (pp.  118-121.)  A  formidable  pros- 
pect :  but  Mr.  Alexander  must  not  suppose  that  other  people's  feelings, 
about  the  matters  of  highest  importance  to  them,  are  bound  up  with 
a  certain  speculative  dogma,  and  even  a  certain  form  of  words,  because,  it 
seems,  his  are.  As  long  as  guilt  is  thoroughly  regarded  as  an  evil,  it 
would  be  quite  safe  even  to  hold  with  Plato,  that  it  is  the  mental  equiva- 
lent of  bodily  disease :  people  would  be  none  the  less  anxious  to  avoid  it 
for  themselves,  and  to  cure  it  in  others.  Whatever  else  may  be  an  illusion, 
it  is  no  illusion  that  some  types  of  conduct  and  character  are  salutary,  and 
others  pernicious,  to  the  race  and  to  each  of  its  members ;  ami  there  is  no 


593  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

he  cannot  help  doing  the  criminal  act,  if  he  is  allowed  to 
believe  that  he  will  be  able  to  commit  it  unpunished.  If, 
on  the  contrary,  the  impression  is  strong  in  his  mind  that 
a  heavy  punishment  will  follow,  he  can,  and  in  most  cases 
does,  help  it. 

The  question  deemed  to  be  so  puzzling  is,  how  punish- 
ment can  be  justified,  if  men's  actions  are  determined  by 
motives,  among  which  motives  punishment  is  one.  A 
more  difficult  question  would  be,  how  it  can  be  justified 
if  they  are  not  so  determined.  Punishment  proceeds  on 
the  assumption  that  the  will  is  governed  by  motives. 
If  punishment  had  no  power  of  acting  on  the  will,  it 
would  be  illegitimate,  however  natural  might  be  the  in- 
clination to  inflict  it.  Just  so  far  as  the  will  is  supposed 
free,  that  is,  capable  of  acting  against  motives,  punish- 
ment is  disappointed  of  its  object,  and  deprived  of  its 
justification. 

There  are  two  ends  which,  on  the  Necessitarian  theory, 
are  sufficient  to  justify  punishment :  the  benefit  of  the 
offender  himself,  and  the  protection  of  others.  The  first 
j  ustifies  it,  because  to  benefit  a  person  cannot  be  to  do 
him  an  injury.  To  punish  him  for  his  own  good,  pro- 
vided the  inflictor  has  any  proper  title  to  constitute 
himself  a  judge,  is  no  more  unjust  than  to  administer 

fear  that  mankiad  will  not  retain  the  property  of  their  nature  by  which 
they  prefer  what  is  salutary  to  what  is  pernicious,  and  proclaim  and  act 
upon  the  preference.  It  is  no  illusion  that  human  beings  are  objects  of 
sympathy  or  of  antipathy  as  they  belong  to  the  one  type  or  to  the  other, 
and  that  the  sympathies  and  antipathies  excited  in  us  by  others  react  on 
ourselves.  The  qualities  which  each  man  feels  to  be  odious  in  others,  are 
odious,  without  illusion,  in  himself.  The  basis  of  Mr.  Alexander's  gloomy 
prophecy  thus  fails  him.  I  might  add,  that  even  if  his  groundless  antici- 
pations came  to  pass  in  some  other  manner,  and  disinterested  love  of 
virtue  and  hatred  of  guilt  faded  away  from  the  earth ;  though  the  human 
race,  thus  degenerated,  would  be  little  worth  preserving,  it  would  proba- 
bly find  the  means  of  preserving  itself  notwithstanding.  The  external 
sanctions,  instead  of  being  more  languidly,  would  probably  be  far  more 
rigidly  enforced  than  at  present ;  for  more  rigorous  penalties  would  be 
necessary  when  there  was  less  inward  sentiment  to  aid  them  :  and  how- 
ever destitute  of  pure  virtuous  feeling  mankind  might  be,  each  one  of 
them  would  be  far  too  well  aware  of  the  importance  of  other  people's 
conduct  to  his  own  interest,  not  to  exact  those  penalties  without  stint, 
and  without  any  of  the  scruples  which  at  present  make  conscientious  men. 
afraid  of  carrying  repression  too  far. 


THE  FREEDOM  OP  THE  WILL.  593 

medicine.  As  far,  indeed,  as  respects  the  criminal 
himself,  the  theory  of  punishment  is,  that  by  counter- 
balancing the  influence  of  present  temptations,  or  ac- 
quired bad  habits,  it  restores  the  mind  to  that  normal 
preponderance  of  the  love  of  right,  which  many  moralists- 
and  theologians  consider  to  constitute  the  true  definition 
of  our  freedom.*     In  its  other  aspect,  punishment  is  a 

*  "  La  liberte,  complete,  reelle,  de  I'homme,  est  la  perfection  hamaine,  . 
"  le  but  a  atteindre."     From  a  paper  by  M.  Albert  Reville,  in  the  Bevue 
Germaniq^ue  for  September,  1863,  in  which  the  question  of  free-will  is 
discussed  (though  only  parenthetically)  with  a  good  sense  and  philosophy 
3Qldom  found  in  recent  writings  on  that  subject. 

The  "  Inquirer"  accuses  me  (pp.  49-51)  of  throwing  aside  a  "  well  Con- 
"  sidered  and  deliberate  opinion,  because  it  refuses  to  fit  in  with  a  foregone 
"  conclusion  on  another  subject,"  when  I  affirm  that  the  good  of  the  person 
punished  can  ever  be  one  of  the  ends  of  punishment ;  and  he  quotes,  on 
that  subject,  my  essay  on  Liberty.  I  am  responsible  for  the  Essay,  but 
not  for  this  absurd  perversion  of  its  doctrines.  Does  it  anywhere  assert 
that  children  ought  not  to  be  punished  for  their  own  good  ?  that  parents, 
and  even  the  magistrate,  when  dealing  vsith  that  class  of  delinqufnts,  are. 
not  entitled  to  constitute  themselves  judges  of  the  delinquent's  good,  and 
even  bound  to  make  it  the  principal  consideration  ?  Did  I  not  e-xpresssly 
leave  open,  as  similar  to  the  case  of  children,  that  of  adult  communities 
which  are  still  in  the  infantine  stage  of  development  ?  And  did  I  say, 
or  did  any  one  ever  say,  that  when,  for  the  protection  of  society,  we 
punish  those  who  have  done  injury  to  society,  the  reformation  of  the 
offenders  is  not  one  of  the  ends  to  be  aimed  at,  in  the  kind  and  mode,  at 
least,  of  the  punishment? 

The  "  Inquirer"  adds  (p.  49),  "  If  I  deserve  punishment,  only  because 
"  my  love  of  right  is  too  weak,  and  my  desire  for  wrong  pleasures  is  too 
"  strong,  and  therefore  punishment  will  help  me  to  dislike  the  latter  the 
"  most,  then  I  equally  deserve  rewards  ;  '  by  counterbalancing  the  in- 
"  fluence  of  present  temptation  or  bad  habits,'  rewards  '  restore  the  mind 
"  to  the  normal  preponderance  of  the  love  of  right.'  .  .  .  And  the  more 

"  wicked  I  am,  the  greater  reward  I  deserve For  children,  and  for 

"  aU  80  far  as  their  own  improvement  is  concerned,  rewards  for  evil-doers 
"  must  be  more  moral  than  punishments,  as  tending  directly  to  diminish 
"  misery,  and  increase  the  sum  of  human  happiness." 

Supposing  even  that  the  matter  of  reward  were  sufficiently  plentiful  to 
allow  of  compensating  everybody  for  every  temptation  he  foregoes,  I  sub- 
mit that  this  plan  would  scarcely  fulfil  the  other,  and  still  more  important 
end  of  punishment,  the  discouragement  of  future  offenders.  And  even  in 
the  case  of  children,  whose  own  improvement,  as  long  as  their  education 
lasta,  is  the  main  end  to  be  considered,  every  one  knows,  though  he  may 
forget  it  in  confuting  an  adversary,  that  pain  is  a  stronger  thing  than 
pleasure,  and  punishment  vastly  more  efficacious  than  reward.  Punish- 
ment, too,  can  alone  produce  the  associations  which  make  the  conduct 
that  incurs  it,  ultimately  hateful  in  itself,  and  which  by  rendering  that 
which  is  injurious  to  society,  sincerely  distasteful  to  its  individual  members, 
produces  the  fellowship  of  feeling  which  gives  them  a  sense  of  common 
interest,  and  enables  tnem  to  sympathize  and  cooperate  as  creatures  of 


594  THK  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

precaution  taken  by  society  in  self-defence.  To  make 
this  just,  the  only  condition  required  is,  that  the  end 
which  society  is  attempting  to  enforce  by  punishment, 
should  be  a  just  one.  Used  as  a  means  of  aggression 
by  society  on  the  just  rights  of  the  individual,  punish- 
ment is  unjust.  Used  to  protect  the  just  rights  of  others 
against  unjust  aggression  by  the  offender,  it  is  just.  If 
it  is  possible  to  have  just  rights,  (which  is  the  same 
thing  as  to  have  rights  at  all)  it  cannot  be  unjust  to  de- 
fend them.  Free-will  or  no  free-will,  it  is  just  to  punish 
so  far  as  is  necessary  for  this  purpose,  as  it  is  just  to  put 
a  wild  beast  to  death  (without  unnecessary  suffiering)  for 
the  same  object. 

Now,  the  primitive  consciousness  we  are  said  to  have, 
that  we  are  accountable  for  our  actions,  and  that  if  we 
violate  the  rule  of  right  we  shall  deserve  punishment,  I 
contend  is  nothing  else  than  our  knowledge  that  punish- 
ment will  be  just:  that  by  such  conduct  we  shall  place 
ourselves  in  the  position  in  which  our  fellow  creatures, 

one  kin.  Thus  much  to  show  (if  it  needs  showing)  that  the  preference  of 
punishment  to  reward  as  a  protection  against  violations  of  right,  is 
no  inconsistency  in  the  conception  of  social  justice  laid  down  in  the  text. 
If  the  objector  now  asks — But,  supposing  this  were  not  so,  and  that  re- 
warding an  offender  were  as  effectual  a  means  of  improving  his  own 
character  and  protecting  society  as  punishing  him,  would  it  equally  com- 
mend itself  to  our  feeling  of  desert  ?  I  answer,  no.  It  would  conflict 
with  that  natural,  and  even  animal,  desire  of  retaliation — of  hurting  those 
who  have  hurt  us,  either  in  ourselves  or  in  anything  we  care  for — which, 
as  I  have  elsewhere  maintained,  is  the  root  of  all  that  distinguishes  our 
feeling  of  justice  from  our  ordinary  sense  of  expediency.  This  natural 
feeling,  whether  instinctive  or  acquired,  though  in  itself , it  has  nothing 
moral  in  it,  yet  when  moralized  by  being  allied  with,  and  limited  by,  regard 
for  the  general  welfare,  becomes,  in  my  view  of  the  matter,  our  moral 
sentiment  of  justice.  And  this  sentiment  is  necessarily  offended  by  re- 
warding delinquents,  and  gratified  by  their  punishment.  The  sentiment 
is  entitled  to  consideration  in  a  world  like  ours,  in  which  punishment  is 
really  necessary  :  but  granting  the  absurd  supposition  of  a  state  of  human 
affairs  in  which  rewarding  offenders  would  really  be  more  expedient  than 
punishing  them,  there  would  be  no  need  of  this  particular  moral  senti- 
ment, and,  like  other  sentiments  the  use  of  which  is  superseded  by  change* 
in  the  circumstances  of  mankind,  it  might,  and  probably  would,  die  away. 
The  chapter  in  which  I  have  discussed  this  question  {Utilitarianism, 
chap,  v.)  is  quite  famihar  to  Mr.  Alexander ;  who  shows  himself  extremely 
well  acquainted  with  all  parts  of  it,  except  those  which  tell  against  his 
own  side.  Even  when  he  accomplishes  {pp.  62  and  69)  the  great  feat  of 
finding  in  it  the  two  statements,  that  justice,  in  the  general  mind,  has  a 


THE  FREEDOM  OP  THE  WILL,  595 

or  the  Deity,  or  both,  will  naturally,  and  may  justly,  in- 
flict punishment  upon  us.  By  using  the  word  justly,  I 
am  not  assuming,  in  the  explanation,  the  thing  I  profess 
to  explain.  As  before  observed,  I  am  entitled  to  postu- 
late the  reality,  and  the  knowledge  and  feeling,  of  moral 
distinctions.  These,  it  is  both  evident  metaphysically 
and  notorious  historically,  are  independent  of  any  theory 
concerning  the  will.  We  are  supposed  capable  of  under- 
standing that  other  people  have  rights,  and  all  that  fol- 
lows from  this.  The  mind  which  possesses  this  idea,  if 
capable  of  placing  itself  at  the  point  of  view  of  another 
person,  must  recognise  it  as  not  unjust  that  others  should 
protect  themselves  against  any  disposition  on  his  part  to 
infringe  their  rights ;  and  he  will  do  so  the  more  readily, 
because  he  also  has  rights,  and  his  rights  continually  re- 
quire the  same  protection.  This,  I  maintain,  is  our  feel- 
ing of  accountability,  in  so  far  as  it  can  be  separated 
from  the  associations  engendered  by  the  prospect  of  being 
actually  called  to  account.  No  one  who  understands  the 
power  of  the  principle  of  association,  can  doubt  its  suffi- 

great  deal  to  do  with  the  notion  of  desert,  and  that  justice  is  not  synony- 
mous with  expediency,  no  one  who  reads  him  would  suspect  that  I  had 
explained  in  the  same  chapter  what,  in  my  view,  the  notion  of  desert  is, 
and  what  there  is  in  our  idea  of  justice  besides  expediency.  Mr.  Alexaa- 
der's  perpetual  insinuations,  and  more  than  insinuations,  of  bad  faith, 
since  he  makes  a  kind  of  retractation  of  their  grossest  meaning  in  one  line 
of  his  essay,  I  pardon,  as  one  of  the  incidents  of  his  rollicking  style ;  but 
it  is  well  that  he  should  be  aware  how  easy,  if  any  one  were  disposed,  it 
would  be  to  retaliate  them. 

How  far  Mr.  Alexander  understands  the  first  elements  of  the  ethical 
system  which  he  denounces,  is  shown  by  one  of  his  arguments,  which  he 
is  so  fond  of  that  he  repeats  it  several  times ;  that  if  the  protection  of 
society  is  a  sufficient  reason  for  hanging  any  one,  it  holds  good  for  hang- 
ing an  innocent  person,  or  a  madman  (pp.  ;  6,  37,  6C',  89).  He  repeatedly 
says,  that  this  has  just  as  deterring  an  effect  as  hanging  a  real  criminal; 
being  of  opinion,  apparently,  that  hanging  a  jierson  who  is  not  guilty 
gives  people  a  motive  to  abstain  from  being  guilty.  As  to  the  madman, 
he  asks,  (p.  65)  "  How  should  the  state  of  mind  of  the  maniac,  as  aname- 
"  nable  to  motive,  any  way  affect  the  efficacy  or  our  hanging  him  for  mur- 
"  der,  as  a  means  to  deter  others  from  murder  ?"  Mr.  Alexander  really 
has  no  claim  to  be  answered,  until  he  has  got  a  step  or  two  beyond  this. 
Perhaps,  however,  he  may  be  able  to  see,  that  all  the  deterring  effect 
which  hanging  can  produce  on  men  who  are  amenable  to  motive,  is  pro- 
daced  by  hanging  men  who  are  amenable  to  motive.  Hanging,  in  ad- 
dition, those  who  are  not  amenable  to  motive,  adds  nothing  to  the  deterring 
effect,  and  is  therefore  a  gratuitous  brutality. 

QQ2 


590  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

ciency  to  create  out  of  these  elements  the  whole  of  the 
feeling  of  which  we  are  conscious.  To  rebut  this  view  of 
the  case  would  require  positive  evidence  j  as,  for  example, 
if  it  could  be  proved  that  the  feeling  of  accountability 
precedes,  in  the  order  of  development,  all  experience  of 
punishment.  No  such  evidence  has  been  produced,  or  is 
producible.  Owing  to  the  limited  accessibility  to  obser- 
vation of  the  mental  processes  of  infancy,  direct  proof 
can  as  little  be  produced  on  the  other  side  :  but  if  there 
is  any  validity  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Law  of  Parcimony, 
we  ought  not  to  assume  any  mental  phsenomenon  as  an 
ultimate  fact,  which  can  be  accounted  for  by  other 
known  properties  of  our  mental  nature. 

I  ask  any  one  who  thinks  that  the  justice  of  punish- 
inent  is  not  sufficiently  vindicated  by  its  being  for  the 
protection  of  just  rights,  how  he  reconciles  his  sense  of 
justice  to  the  punishment  of  crimes  committed  in  obedi- 
ence to  a  perverted  conscience?  Eavaillac,  and  Balthasar 
Oerard,  did  not  regard  themselves  as  criminals,  but  as 
heroic  martyrs.  If  the}'^  were  justly  put  to  death,  the 
justice  of  punishment  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  state  of 
mind  of  the  offender,  further  than  as  this  may  affect  the 
efficacy  of  punishment  as  a  means  to  its  end.  It  is  im- 
possible to  assert  the  justice  of  punishment  for  crimes  of 
fanaticism,  on  any  other  ground  than  its  necessity  for 
the  attainment  of  a  just  end.  If  that  is  not  a  justification, 
there  is  no  justification.  All  other  imaginary  justifica- 
tions break  down  in  their  application  to  this  case.* 

*  The  force  of  this  argument  is  attested  by  the  straits  to  which  my  most 
persevering  assailant,  Mr.  Alexander,  is  reduced  by  it  (pp.  6.3,  64).  He 
finds  himself  obliged  to  say  that  "could  we  have  positive  assurance,"  in 
the  case  of  such  people,  "  that  their  outrage  of  the  obligation  to  respect 
"  life  was  solely  an  act  of  self-sacrifice  to  what  they  considered  a  higher 
*'  and  more  sacred  one.  we  should  be  obliged  to  admit  that  their  doom  was 
"  not  just  in  the  particular  instance."  This  is  very  well,  but  we  want 
practica  as  well  as  theory.  Would  you  hang  them  ?  Mr.  Alexander 
makes  a  halting  half-admission  that  he  would.  "  A  dubious  point  of  jus- 
"  tice— dubious,  because  the  true  motive  of  the  act  must  always  remain 
"  obscure — may  here  be  allowed  to  be  overridden  by  a  plain  and  potent 
"  mandate  of  expediency."  Mr.  Alexander  therefore  would  hang  men 
when  it  is  doubtful  whether  they  deserve  it ;  would  hang  them  for  what 
*'  may  really  have  been  an  act  of  subUme  virtue."  But  what  is  the  amount 


/\aAnijJULoiO. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  597 

If,  indeed,  punishment  is  inflicted  for  any  other  reason 
than  in  order  to  operate  on  the  will ;  if  its  purpose  be 
other  than  that  of  improving  the  culprit  himself,  or 
securing  the  just  rights  of  others  against  unjust  viola- 
tion, then,  I  admit,  the  case  is  totally  altered.  If  any 
one  thinks  that  there  is  justice  in  the  infliction  of  pur- 
poseless suffering;  that  there  is  a  natural  affinity  be- 
tween the  two  ideas  of  guilt  and  punishment,  which 
makes  it  intrinsically  fitting  that  wherever  there  has 
been  guilt,  pain  should  be  inflicted  by  way  of  retribu- 
tion ;  I  acknowledge  that  I  can  find  no  argument  to 
justify  punishment  inflicted  on  this  principle.  As  a 
legitimate  satisfaction  to  feelings  of  indignation  and  re- 
sentment which  are  on  the  whole  salutary  and  worthy 
of  cultivation,  I  can  in  certain  cases  admit-it;  but  here 
it  is  still  a  means  to  an  end.  The  merely  retributive 
view  of  punishment  derives  no  justification  from  the 
doctrine  I  support.  But  it  derives  quite  as  little  from 
the  free-will  doctrine.  Suppose  it  true  that  the  will  of 
a  malefactor,  when  he  committed  an  offence,  was  free, 
or  in  other  words,  that  he  acted  badly,  not  because  he 
was  of  a  bad  disposition,  but  from  no  cause  in  particular : 
it  is  not  easy  to  deduce  from  this  the  conclusion  that  it 
is  just  to  punish  him.  That  his  acts  were  beyond  the 
command  of  motives  might  be  a  good  reason  for  keep- 
ing out  of  his  way,  or  placing  him  under  bodily  re- 

of  real  dubiousness  in  cases  like  these  ?  Of  all  acta  that  a  man  can  do, 
those  by  which  he  knowingly  sacrifices  his  life,  sometimes  with  the  addi- 
tion of  horrible  torments,  are  the  clearest  from  suspicion  of  any  motives 
but  honest  ones.  Mr.  Alexander  talks  of  Brntus  and  Charlotte  Oorday, 
but  I  am  content  with  Ravaillac.  Is  there  the  smallest  reason  to  doubt 
that  Ravaillac's  "  outrage  of  the  obligation  to  respect  life"  was  "  an  act 
of  self-sacrifice"  to  what,  in  his  opinion,  was  "  a  higher  and  more  sacred 
one  r*"  What  motive  had  Ravaillac  for  his  abominable  action  except  a 
supposed  duty  to  God,  and  did  he  not  deem  this  his  liighest  and  most 
sacred  dnty  ?  As  for  Mr.  Alexander's  hint  that  such  a  man,  if  i^ot  cul- 
pable in  the  act,  was  "  culpable  iu  the  perversion  of  his  conscience  which 
led  to  it,"  it  is  the  old  odious  assumption  of  persecutors,  that  acts  which 
they  cannot  show  to  have  been  wicked  in  intention,  must  have  origiDAted 
in  previous  wickedness.  The  act  of  RavaUlac  simply  originated  in  false 
teaching,  coming  to  him  from  the  same  CLuarter  from  which  had  come 
most  of  the  good  teaching  which  he  had  received  during  life.  It  came 
from  the  fountain  of  goodness,  not  of  wickedness. 


■598  THE  FREEDOM   OV    THE    WILL. 

straint;  but  no  reason  for  inflicting  pain  upon  him, 
when  that  pain,  by  supposition,  could  not  operate  as  a 
deterring  motive.* 

While  the  doctrine  I  advocate  does  not  support  the 
idea  that  punishment  in  mere  retaHation  is  justifiablp, 
it  at  the  same  time  fully  accounts  for  the  general  and 
natural  sentiment  of  its  being  so.  From  our  earliest 
childhood,  the  idea  of  doing  wrong  (that  is,  of  doing  what 
is  forbidden,  or  what  is  injurious  to  others)  and  the  idea 
of  punishment  are  presented  to  our  mind  tosether,  and 
the  intense  character  of  the  impressions  causes  the  asso- 
ciation between  them  to  attain  the  highest  degree  of 
closeness  and  intimacy.  Is  it  strange,  or  unlike  the 
usual  processes  of  the  human  mind,  that  in  these  cir- 
cumstances we  should  retain  the  feeling,  and  forget  the 
reason  on  which  it  is  grounded  ?  But  why  do  1  speak 
of  forgetting  ?  In  most  cases  the  reason  has  never,  in 
oui*  early  education,  been  presented  to  the  mind.  The 
only  ideas  presented  have  been  those  of  wrong  and 
punishment,   and  an  inseparable   association   has    been 

*  Several  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  admissions  are  strong  arguments  against 
the  alleged  self-evident  connexion  between  free-will  and  accountability. 
We  have  found  him  affirming  that  a  volition  not  determined  by  motives 
"  would,  if  conceived,  be  conceived  as  morally  worthless ;"  that  "  the  free 
"  acts  of  an  indifferent,  are,  morally  and  rationally,  as  worthless  as  the 
"  preordained  passions  of  a  determined  will;"  and  that  "it  is  impossible 
"  to  see  how  a  cause,  undetermined  by  any  motive,  can  be  a  rational,  moral, 
"  and  accountable  cause."  If  all  this  be  so,  there  can  be  no  intuitive  per- 
ception of  a  necessary  connexion  between  free-will  and  morality ;  it  would 
appear,  on  the  contrary,  that  we  are  naturally  unable  to  recognise  an  act 
as  moral,  if  it  is,  in  the  sense  of  the  theory,  free. 

[Mr.  Alexander  (p.  80)  actually  thinks  that  in  these  passages,  Sir  "W. 
Hamilton  is  "  asserting  the  determination  of  the  will  by  motives ;"  and 
cannot  believe  that  he  intended  "  to  assert  an  absohite  commencement  as 
"  the  mode  under  which  Freedom,  though  inconceivable,  has  yet  to  be 
"  believed:"  since  this  "  would  have  been  to  rush  with  his  eyes  open  on 
"  the  staring  contradictory,  of  a  thing  at  once  caused  and  uncaused." 
Yet,  presently  after,  he  himself  charges  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  doctrine  with 
requiring  belief  in  two  contrary  inconceivables.  In  the  present  case  it 
only  requires  a  belief  in  one  of  them,  an  absolute,  or  uncaused,  commence- 
ment. Mr.  Alexander  does  not  lay  claim  to  much  knowledge  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  ;  and  certainly  no  one  who  understood  what  that  philosopher, 
and  most  others  who  discuss  this  question,  mean  by  "  to  determine," 
could  fail  to  see  that  with  him  the  determination  of  the  will  by  motives 
means  Determinism,  or  as  it  is  commonly  called,  Necessity.] 


THE  FREEDOM  OP  THE  WILL.  599 

created  between  these  directly,  without  the  help  of  any 
intervening  idea.  Tins  is  quite  enough  to  make  the 
spontaneous  feelings  of  mankind  regard  punishment  and 
a  wrongdoer  as  naturally  fitted  to  each  other — as  a  con- 
junction appropriate  in  itself,  independently  of  any  con- 
sequences. Even  Sir  W.  Hamilton  recognises  as  one  of 
the  common  sources  of  error,  that  "  the  associations  of 
thought  are  mistaken  for  the  connexions  of  existence."* 
If  this  is  true  anywhere,  it  is  truest  of  all  in  the  asso- 
ciations into  which  emotions  enter.  A  strong  feeling, 
directly  excited  by  an  object,  is  felt  (except  when  con- 
tradicted by  the  feelings  of  other  people)  as  its.  own 
sufl&cient  justification — no  more  requiring  the  support  of 
a  reason  than  the  fact  that  ginger  is  hot  in  the  mouth : 
and  it  almost  requires  a  philosopher  to  recognise  the 
need  of  a  reason  for  his  feelings,  unless  he  has  been 
under  the  practical  necessity  of  justifying  them  to  per- 
sons by  whom  they  are  not  shared. 

That  a  person  holding  what  is  called  the  Necessitarian 
doctrine  should  on  that  account  feel  that  it  would  be 
unjust  to  punish  him  for  his  wrong  actions,  seems  to  me 
the  veriest  of  chimeras.  Yes,  if  he  really  "  could  not 
help"  acting  as  he  did,  that  is,  if  it  did  not  depend  on  his 
will ;  if  he  was  under  physical  constraint,  or  even  if  he 
was  under  the  action  of  such  a  violent  motive  that  no  fear 
ol'  punishment  could  have  any  effect ;  which,  if  capable  of 
being  ascertained,  is  a  just  ground  of  exemption,  and  is  the 
reason  why  by  the  laws  of  most  countries  people  are  not 
punished  tor  what  they  were  compelled  to  do  by  imme- 
diate danger  of  death.  But  if  the  criminal  was  in  a  state 
capable  of  being  operated  upon  by  the  tear  of  punish- 
ment, no  metaphysical  objection,  1  believe,  will  make 
him  feel  his  punishment  unjust.  Neither  will  he  feel, 
that  because  his  act  was  the  consequence  of  motives, 
operating  upon  a  certain  mental  disposition,  it  was  not 
his  own  fault.  For,  first,  it  was  at  all  events  his  own 
defect  or  infirmity,  for  which  the  expectation  of  punish- 
ment is  the  appropriate  cure.     And  secondly,  the  word 

*  Lectures,  iii.  47. 


600  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

fault,  SO  far  from  being  inapplicable,  is  the  specific  name 
for  the  kind  of  defect  or  infirmity  which  he  has  dis- 
played— insufficient  love  of  good  and  aversion  to  evil. 
The  weakness  of  these  feelings  or  their  strength  is  in 
every  one's  mind  the  standard  of  fault  or  merit,  of  de- 
grees of  fault  and  degrees  of  merit.  Whether  we  are 
judging  of  particular  actions,  or  of  the  character  of  a 
person,  we  are  wholly  guided  by  the  indications  afforded 
of  the  energy  of  these  influences.  If  the  desire  of  right 
and  aversion  to  wrong  have  yielded  to  a  small  tempta- 
tion, we  judge  them  to  be  weak,  and  our  disapprobation 
is  strong.  If  the  temptation  to  which  they  have  yielded 
is  so  great  that  even  strong  feelings  of  virtue  might  have 
succumbed  to  it,  our  moral  reprobation  is  less  intense. 
If,  again,  the  moral  desires  and  aversions  have  prevailed, 
but  not  over  a  very  strongr  force,  we  hold  that  the  action 
was  good,  but  that  there  was  little  merit  in  it ;  and  our 
estimate  of  the  merit  rises,  in  exact  proportion  to  the 
greatness  of  the  obstacle  which  the  moral  feeling  proved 
strong  enough  to  overcome. 

Mr.  Mansel*  has  furnished  what  he  thinks  a  refwtation 
of  the  Necessitarian  argument,  of  which  it  is  well  to 
take  notice,  the  more  so,  perhaps,  as  it  is  directed  against 
some  remarks  on  the  subject  by  the  present  writer  in  a 
former  work  :f  remarks  which  were  not  intended  as  an 
argument  for  so-called  Necessity,  but  only  to  place  the 
nature  and  meaning  of  that  ill-understood  doctrine  in  a 
truer  light.  With  this  purpose  in  view,  it  was  re- 
marked that  "  by  saying  that  a  man's  actions  necessarily 
"follow  from  his  character,  all  that  is  really  meant  (for 
"  no  more  is  meant  in  any  case  whatever  of  causation)  is 
"  that  he  invariably  does  act  in  conformity  to  his  character, 
"  and  that  any  one  who  thoroughly  knew  his  character, 
*'  could  certainly  predict  how  he  would  act  in  any  sup- 
"  posable  case.  No  more  than  this  is  contended  for  by 
"any  one  but  an  Asiatic  fatalist."     "And   no    more 

*  Prolegomena  Logica,  Note  C  at  tlie  end. 
t  iSystem  of  Logic,  Book  vi.  ch.  2. 


THE  FREEDOM  OP  THE  WILL.  601 

"  than  this,"  observes  Mr.  Mansel,  '*  is  needed  to  con- 
"  struct  a  system  of  fatalism  as  rigid  as  any  Asiatic  can 
"desire.' 

Mr.  Mansel  is  mistaken  in  thinking  that  the  doctrine 
of  the  causation  of  human  actions  is  fatalism  at  all,  or  re- 
sembles fatalism  in  any  of  its  moral  or  intellectual  effects. 
To  call  it  by  that  name  is  to  break  down  a  fundamental 
distinction.  Real  fatalism  is  of  two  kinds.  Pure,  or 
Asiatic  fatalism, — the  fatalism  of  the  (Edipus, — holds 
that  our  actions  do  not  depend  upon  our  desires.  What- 
ever our  wishes  may  be,  a  superior  power,  or  an  abstract 
destiny,  w^ill  overrule  them,  and  compel  us  to  act,  not  as 
we  desire,  but  in  the  manner  predestined.  Our  love  of 
good  and  hatred  of  evil  are  of  no  efficacy,  and  though  in 
themselves  they  may  be  virtuous,  as  far  as  conduct  is 
concerned  it  is  unavailing  to  cultivate  them.  The  other 
kind.  Modified  Fatalism  I  will  call  it,  holds  that  our 
actions  are  determined  by  our  will,  our  will  by  our 
desires,  and  our  desires  by  the  joint  influence  of  the 
motives  presented  to  us  and  of  our  individual  character ; 
but  that,  our  character  having  been  made  for  us  and  not 
by  us,  we  are  not  responsiole  for  it,  nor  for  the  actions  it 
leads  to,  and  should  in  vain  attempt  to  alter  them.  The 
true  doctrine  ol  the  Causation  of  human  actions  main- 
tains, in  opposition  to  both,  that  not  only  our  conduct, 
but  our  character,  is  in  part  amenable  to  our  will ;  that 
we  can,  by  employing  the  proper  means,  improve  our 
character ;  and  that  if  our  character  is  such  that  while 
it  remains  what  it  is,  it  necessitates  us  to  do  wrong,  it 
will  be  just  to  apply  motives  which  will  necessitate  us  to 
strive  for  its  improvement,  and  so  emancipate  ourselves 
from  the  other  necessity.  In  other  words,  we  are  under  a 
moral  obligation  to  seek  the  improvement  of  our  moral 
character.  We  shall  not  indeed  do  so  unless  we  desire 
our  improvement,  and  desire  it  more  than  we  dislike  the 
means  which  must  be  employed  lor  the  purpose.  But 
does  Mr.  Mansel,  or  any  other  of  the  free-will  philoso- 
phers, think  that  we  can  wiU  the  means  if  we  do  not 


602  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

desire  the  end,  or  if  our  desire  of  the  end  is  weaker  than 
our  aversion  to  the  means  ?* 

Mr.  Mansel  is  more  rigid  in  his  ideas  of  what  the  free- 
will theory  requires,  than  one  of  the  most  eminent  of 
the  thinkers  who  have  adopted  it.  According  to  Mr. 
Mansel,  the  belief  that  whoever  knew  perfectly  our 
character  and  our  circumstances  could  predict  our  actions, 
amounts  to  Asiatic  fatalism.  According  to  Kant,  in  his 
Metaphysics  of  Ethics,  such  capability  of  prediction  is 
quite  compatible  with  the  freedom  of  the  will.  This 
seems,  at  tirst  sight,  to  be  an  admission  of  everything 
which  the  rational  supporters  of  the  opposite  theory 
could  desire.  But  Kant  avoids  this  consequence,  by 
changing(as  lawyers  would  say)the  venue  of  free-will, from 
our  actions  generally,  to  the  formation  of  our  character. 
It  is  in  that,  he  thinks,  we  are  free,  and  he  is  almost 
willing  to  admit  that  while  our  character  is  what  it  is, 
our  actions  are  necessitated  by  it.  In  drawing  this  dis- 
tinction, the  philosopher  of  Konigsberg  saves  incon- 
venient facts  at  the  expense  of  the  consistency  of  his 
theory.  There  cannot  be  one  theory  for  one  kind  of 
voluntary   actions,   and    another   theory  for   the    other 

*  This  vital  truth  in  moral  psychology,  that  we  can  improve  our  cha- 
racter if  we  will,  is  a  great  stumbling  block  both  to  the  "  inquirer"  and 
to  Mr.  Alexander.  They  maintain  that  this  fact  makes  no  difference  at 
all,  and  that  the  Causation  of  human  actions  is  exactly  the  same  thing 
with  Modified  Fatalism.  That  the  "  Inquirer"  cannot  see  any  difference, 
excites  no  surprise,  since  he  professes  himself  (p.  46)  unable  to  understand 
"  how  our  conduct  is  amenable  to  our  will  if  it  is  wholly  caused  by  our 
"  character  and  circumstances."  Is  not  the  very  doctrine  he  is  contend- 
ing against,  that  our  character  and  circumstances  cause  it  through  our 
will  ?  Both  he  and  Mr.  Alexander  protest  vehemently,  and  Mr.  Alex- 
ander at  much  length,  that  the  Causation  doctrine  is  as  incompatible  with 
Free-will  as  Fatalism  is.  As  if  anybody  had  denied  that.  In  the  very 
next  paragraph,  when  arguing  against  Kant,  I  expressly  affirmed  it.  But, 
if  it  is  not  too  much  to  ask,  let  them  try  to  put  their  own  opinion  in  abey- 
ance, and  condescend  for  a  tew  moments  to  look  at  the  question  from 
mine.  Suppose  (I  have  as  much  right  to  make  the  supposition  as  they  have) 
that  a  person  dislikes  some  part  of  his  own  character,  and  would  be  glad 
to  change  it.  He  cannot,  as  he  well  knows,  change  it  by  a  mere  act  of 
volition.  He  must  use  the  means  which  nature  gives  to  ourselves,  as  she 
gave  to  our  parents  and  teachers,  of  iniiuencing  our  character  by  appro- 
priate circumstances.  If  he  is  a  Modified  Fatalist,  he  will  not  use  those 
means,  for  he  will  not  believe  in  their  efficacy;  but  will  remain  passively 
discontented  with  himself,  or  what  is  worse,  will  learn  to  be  contented, 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  603 

kinds.  When  we  voluntarily  exert  ourselves,  as  it  is 
our  duty  to  do,  for  the  improvement  of  our  character,  or 
when  we  act  in  a  manner  which  (either  consciously  on 
our  part  or  unconsciously)  deteriorates  it,  these,  like  all 
other  voluntary  acts,  presuppose  that  there  was  already 
'something  in  our  character,  or  in  that  combined  with 
our  circumstances,  which  led  us  to  do  so,  and  accounts 
for  our  doing  so.  The  person,  therefore,  who  is  sup- 
posed able  to  predict  our  actions  from  our  character  as  it 
now  is,  would,  under  the  same  conditions  of  perfect , 
knowledge,  be  equally  able  to  predict  what  we  should  do 
to  change  our  character:  and  if  this  be  the  meaning  of 
necessity,  that  part  of  our  conduct  is  as  necessary  as  all 
the  rest.  If  necessity  means  more  than  this  abstract 
possibility  of  being  foreseen ;  if  it  means  any  mysterious 
compulsion,  apart  from  simple  invariability  of  sequence, 
I  deny  it  as  strenuously  as  any  one  in  the  case  of  human 
volitions,  but  I  deny  it  just  as  much  of  all  othet-  phae- 
nomena.  To  enforce  this  distinction  was  the  principal 
object  of  the  remarks  which  Mr.  Mansel  has  criticised. 
If  an  unessential  distinction  from  Mr.  Mansel's  point  of 
view,  it  is  essential  from  mine,  and  of  supreme  impor- 
tance in  a  practical  aspect. 

thinking  that  his  character  has  been  made  for  him,  and  that  he  cannot 
make  it  over  again,  however  wilhng.     If,  on  the  contrary,  he  is  a  Moral     I 
Causationist,  he  will  know  that  the  work  is  not  finally  and  irrevocably    \ 
done ;  that  the  improvement  of  his  character  is  still  jiossible  by  the  proper     | 
means,  the  only  needful  condition  being  that  he  should  desire,  what  by  the     i 
supposition  he  does  desire  :  consequently  if  the  desire  is  stronger  than  the     . 
means  are  disagreeable,  he  will  set  about  doing  that  which,  if  done,  will 
improve  his  character.     I  cannot  suppose  my  critics  capable  of  maintam- 
ing  that  such  a  difference  as  this,  between  the  two  theories,  is  of  no  prac- 
tical importance ;  and  I  must,  with  all  courtesy,  decline  to  recognise  as 
entitled  to  any  voice  in  the  question,  whoever  is  not  able  to  seize  a  dis- 
tinction so  broad  and  obvious.  .       ...,«• 
Mr.  Alexander's  curious  dictum  (pp.  18-20)    that  a  motive  is  itseU 
an  act,  can  only  have  a  true  meaning,  or  any  meaning  at  all,  it  under- 
stood of  this  indirect  influence  of  our  voluntary  acts  over  our  mental 
dispositions.     That  a  person  can,  by  an  act  of  wUl,  either  give  to  him- 
self, or  take  away  from  himself,  a  desire  or  an  aversion,  I  suppose  even 
Mr.  Alexander  wiU  hardly  atfirm  :  but  we  can,  by  a  course  of  seU -culture, 
finally  modify,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  our   desire-s  and  a^raj??^: 
which  is  the  doctrine  of  Moral  Causation,  as  distinguished  from  Modifiea 
Fatalism. 


604  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL* 

The  free-will  metaphysicians  have  made  little  endea- 
vour to  prove  that  we  can  will  in  opposition  to  our 
strongest  desire,  but  have  strenuously  maintained  that 
we  can  will  when  we  have  no  strongest  desire.  With 
this  view  Dr.  Eeid  formei-ly,  and  Mr.  Mansel  now,  have 
thrown  in  the  teeth  of  Necessitarians  the  famous  asinus 
Buridani.  If,  say  they,  the  will  were  solely  determined 
by  motives,  the  ass,  between  two  bundles  of  hay,  exactly 
alike,  and  equally  distant  trorai  him,  would  remain  un- 
decided until  he  died  of  hunger.  From  Sir  W.  Hamil- 
ton's notes  on  this  chapter  of  Eeid,*  I  infer  that  he  did 
not  countenance  this  argument;  and  it  is  surprising 
that  writers  of  talent  should  have  seen  anything  in  it.  I 
wave  the  objection  that  if  it  applies  at  all,  it  proves  that 
the  ass  also  has  free-will ;  for  perhaps  he  has.  But  the 
ass,  it  is  affirmed,  would  starve  before  he  decided.  Yes, 
possibl}'-,  if  he  remained  all  the  time  in  a  fixed  attitude 
of  deliberation ;  if  he  never  for  an  instant  ceased  to 
balance  one  against  another  the  rival  attractions,  and  if 
they  really  were  so  exactly  equal  that  no  dwelling  on 
them  could  detect  any  difference.  But  this  is  not  the 
way  in  which  things  take  place  on  our  planet.  From 
mere  lassitude,  if  from  no  other  cause,  he  would  intermit 
the  process,  and  cease  thinking  of  the  rival  objects  at 
all :  until  a  moment  arrived  when  he  would  be  seeing  or 
thinking  of  one  only,  and  that  fact,  combined  with  the 
sensation  of  hunger,  would  determine  him  to  a  decision. 

But  the  argument  on  which  Mr.  Mansel  lays  most  stress 
(it  is  also  one  of  Eeid's)  is  the  following.  Necessitarians 
say  that  the  will  is  governed  by  the  strongest  motive : 
"  but  I  only  know  the  strength  of  motives  in  relation  to 
"  the  will  by  the  test  of  ultimate  prevalence ;  so  that 
"this  means  no  more  than  that  the  prevailing  motive 
"  prevails."  I  have  heretofore  complimented  Mr.  Mansel 
on  seeing  farther,  in  some  things,  than  his  master.  In 
the  present  instance  I  am  compelled  to  remark,  that  he 
has  not  seen  so  far.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  was  not  the  man 
to  neglect  an  argument  like  this,  had  there   been  no 

*  Pp.  609-611. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL.  605 

flaw  in  it.  The  fact  is  that  there  are  two.  First,  those 
who  say  that  the  will  follows  the  strongest  motive,  do 
not  mean  the  motive  which  is  strongest  in  relation  to 
the  will,  or  in  other  words,  that  the  will  follows  what 
it  does  follow.  They  mean  the  motive  which  is  strongest 
in  relation  to  pain  and  pleasure  ;  since  a  motive,  being 
a  desire  or  aversion,  is  proportional  to  the  pleasantness, 
as  conceived  by  us,  of  the  thing  desired,  or  the  pain- 
fulness  of  the  thing  shunned.  And  when  what  was  at 
first  a  direct  impulse  towards  pleasure,  or  recoil  from 
pain,  has  passed  into  a  habit  or  a  fixed  purpose,  then 
the  strength  of  the  motive  means  the  completeness  and 
promptitude  of  the  association  which  has  been  formed 
between  an  idea  and  an  outward  act.  This  is  the  first 
answer  to  Mr.  Mansel.  The  second  is,  that  even  sup- 
posing there  were  no  test  of  the  strength  of  motives  but 
their  effect  on  the  will,  the  proposition  that  the  will  fol- 
lows the  strongest  motive  would  not,  as  Mr.  Mansel 
supposes,  be  identical  and  unmeaning.  We  say,  without 
absurdity,  that  if  two  weights  are  placed  in  opposite 
scales,  the  heavier  will  lift  the  other  up ;  yet  we  mean 
nothing  by  the  heavier,  except  the  weight  which  will 
lift  up  the  other.  The  proposition,  nevertheless,  is  not 
unmeaning,  for  it  signifies  that  in  many  or  most  cases 
there  is  a  heavier,  and  that  this  is  always  the  same  one, 
not  one  or  the  other  as  it  may  happen.  In  like  manner, 
even  if  the  strongest  motive  meant  only  the  motive 
which  prevails,  yet  if  there  is  a  prevailing  motive — if, 
all  other  antecedents  being  the  same,  the  motive  which 
prevails  to-day  will  j)revail  to-morrow  and  every  sub- 
sequent day — Sir  W.  Hamilton  was  acute  enough  to  see 
that  the  free-will  theory  is  not  saved.  I  regret  that  I 
cannot,  in  this  instance,  credit  Mr.  Mansel  with  the 
same  acuteness. 

Before  leaving  the  subject,  it  is  worth  while  to  remark, 
that  not  only  the  doctrine  of  Necessity,  but  Predestina- 
tion in  its  coarsest  form — the  belief  that  all  our  actions 
are  divinely  preordained — though,  in  my  view,  incon- 
sistent with  ascribing  any  moral  attributes  whatever  to 


606  THE  FREEDOM  OF  THE  WILL. 

the  Deity,  yet  if  combined  with  the  belief  that  God 
works  according  to  general  laws,  which  have  to  be  learnt 
from  experience,  has  no  tendency  to  make  us  act  in  any 
respect  otherwise  than  we  should  do  if  we  thought  our 
actions  really  contingent.  For  if  Gbd  acts  according  to 
general  laws,  then,  whatever  he  may  have  preordained,  he 
has  preordained  that  it  shall  take  place  through  the  causes 
on  which  experience  shows  ifc  to  be  consequent :  and  if 
he  has  predestined  that  I  shall  attain  my  ends,  he  has 
predestined  that  I  shall  do  so  by  studying  and  putting 
in  practice  the  means  which  lead  to  their  attainment. 
When  the  belief  in  predestination  has  a  paralysing  effect 
on  conduct,  as  is  sometimes  the  case  with  Mahomedans, 
it  is  because  they  fancy  they  can  infer  what  God  has 
predestined,  without  waiting  for  the  result.  They  think, 
that  either  by  particular  signs  of  some  sort,  or  from  the 
general  aspect  of  things,  they  can  perceive  the  issue 
towards  which  God  is  working,  and  having  discovered 
this,  naturally  deem  useless  any  attempt  to  defeat  it. 
Because  something  will  certainly  happen  if  nothing  is 
done  to  prevent  it,  they  think  it  will  certainly  happen 
whatever  may  be  done  to  prevent  it;  in  a  word,  they 
believe  in  Necessity  in  the  only  proper  meaning  of  the 
term — an  issue  unalterable  by  human  efforts  or  desires. 


607 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 


SIR  WILLIAM   Hamilton's  oi>iNioNs  on  the  study  op 

MATHEMATICS. 

No  account  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  philosophy  could  be 
complete,  which  omitted  to  notice  his  famous  attack  on 
the  tendency  of  mathematical  studies :  for  though  there 
is  no  direct  connexion  between  this  and  his  metaphy- 
sical opinions,  it  affords  the  most  express  evidence  we 
have  of  those  fatal  lacunce  in  the  circle  of  his  knowledge, 
which  unfitted  him  for  taking  a  comprehensive  or  even 
an  accurate  view  of  the  processes  of  the  human  mind  in 
the  establishment  of  truth.     If  there  is  any  pre-requisite 
which  all  must  see  to  be  indispensable  in  one  who  at- 
tempts to  give  laws  to  human  intellect,  it  is  a  thorough 
acquaintance  with  the  modes  by  which  human  intellect 
has  proceeded,  in  the  cases  where,  by  universal  acknow- 
ledgment, grounded  on  subsequent  direct  verification,  it 
has  succeeded   in  ascertaining  the  greatest  number  of 
important  and  recondite  truths.     This  requisite  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  had  not,   in   any  tolerable  degree,   fulfilled. 
Even  of  pure  mathematics  he  apparently  knew  little  but 
the  rudiments.     Of  mathematics  as  applied  to  investi- 
gating the  laws  of  physical  nature ;  of  the  mode  in  which 
the  properties  of  number,  extension,  and  figure,  are  made 
instrumental  to  the  ascertainment  of  truths  other  than 
arithmetical  or  geometrical — it  is  too  much  to  say  that 
he  had  even  a  superficial  knowledge :  there  is  not  a  line 
in  his  works  which  shows  him  to  have  had  any  know- 
ledge at  all.     He  had  no  conception  of  what  the  process 
is.     In  this  he  differed  greatly  and  disadvantageously 
from  his  immediate  predecessor  in  the  same  school  of 


608  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

metaphysical  thought,  Professor  Dugald  Stewart ;  whose 
works  derive  a  great  part  of  their  value  from  the  founda- 
tion of  sound  and  accurate  scientific  knowledge  laid 
by  his  mathematical  and  physical  studies,  and  which  his 
subsequent  metaphysical  pursuits  enabled  him,  quite  suc- 
cessfully to  the  length  of  his  tether,  to  clarify  and  reduce 
to  principles. 

If  Sir  W.  Hamilton  liad  contented  himself  with  say- 
ing of  mathematics,  that  it  is  not,  of  itself  alone,  a  suf- 
ficient education  of  the  intellectual  faculties ;  that  it 
cultivates  the  mind  only  partially ;  that  there  are  im- 
portant kinds  of  intellectual  cultivation  and  discipline 
which  it  does  not  give,  and  to  which,  therefore,  if  pur- 
sued to  the  exclusion  of  the  studies  which  do  give  them, 
it  is  unfavourable ;  he  would  have  said  something,  not 
new  indeed,  but  true,  not  of  mathematics  alone,  but  of 
every  limited  and  special  employment  of  the  mental 
faculties ;  of  every  study  in  which  the  human  mind  can 
engage,  except  the  two  or  three  highest,  most  difficult, 
and  most  imperfect,  which,  requiring  all  the  faculties 
in  their  greatest  attainable  perfection,  can  never  be  re- 
commended or  thought  of  as  preparatory  discipline,  but 
are  themselves  the  chief  purpose  for  which  such  prepara- 
tion is  required.  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  however,  has  as- 
serted much  more  than  this.  He  undertakes  to  show  that 
the  study  of  mathematics  is  not  an  useful  intellectual 
discipline  at  all,  except  in  one  comparatively  humble  par- 
ticular, which  it  has  in  common  with  some  of  the  most 
despised  pursuits ;  and  that,  if  prosecuted  far,  it  positively 
unfits  the  mind  forthe  usefulemploymentof  its  faculties  on 
any  other  object.  As  might  be  expected  from  an  attempt 
to  maintain  such  a  thesis  by  one  who,  however  acute  on 
other  matters,  had  no  sufficient  knowledge  of  the  subject 
he  was  writing  about,  this  celebrated  dissertation  is  one 
of  the  weakest  parts  of  his  works.  He  ignores  not  only 
the  whole  of  his  adversary's  case,  but  the  most  important 
part  of  his  own ;  and  has  made  a  far  less  powerful  attack 
on  the  tendencies  of  mathematical  studies,  than  could 
easily  be  made  by  one  who  understood  the  subject.     He 


ON    THE    STUDY    OF    MATHEMATICS.  609 

has,  in  fact,  missed  the  most  considerable  of  the  evil 
effects  to  the  production  of  which  those  studies  have 
contributed ;  and  has  thrown  no  light  on  the  intellectual 
shortcomings  of  the  common  run  of  mathematicians,  so 
signally  displayed  in  their  wretched  treatment  of  the 
generalities  of  their  own  science.  He  finds  hardly  any- 
thing to  say  to  their  disadvantage  but  things  so  trite  and 
obvious,  that  the  greatest  zealot  for  mathematics  could 
afford  to  pass  them  by,  insisting  only  on  the  inestimable 
benefits  which  are  to  be  set  against  them,  and  which 
alone  are  really  to  the  purpose ;  for  it  is  no  objection  to 
a  harrow  that  it  is  not  a  plough,  nor  to  a  saw  that  it  is 
not  a  chisel. 

For  instance,  are  we  much  the  wiser  for  being  once 
more  told,  at  great  length,  and  with  a  cloud  of  witnesses 
brought  to  back  the  assertion,  that  matliematics,  being 
concerned  only  with  demonstrative  evidence,  does  not 
teach  us,  either  by  theory  or  practice,  to  estimate  pro- 
babilities? Did  any  mathematician,  or  eulogist  of  ma- 
thematics, ever  pretend  that  it  did  ?  Does  the  science 
to  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  assigns  a  place  above  all  others 
as  an  intellectual  discipline — -does  Metaphysics  enable 
us  to  judge  of  probable  evidence?  If  such  a  claim  has 
ever  been  made  in  its  behalf,  I  am  not  aware  of  it ;  Sir 
W.  Hamilton,  certainly,  was  too  well  acquainted  with 
the  subject  to  make  any  such  pretension.  Metaphysics, 
like  Mathematics,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  fundamental 
sciences,  demands,  not  probable,  but  certain  evidence. 
The  province  of  Probabilities  in  science  is  not  the  ab- 
stract, but  what  M.  Corate  terms  the  concrete  sciences ; 
those  which  treat  of  the  combinations  actually  realized 
in  Nature,  as  distinguished  from  the  general  laws  which 
would  equally  govern  any  other  combinations  of  the 
same  elements :  zoology  and  botany,  for  example,  as  con- 
trasted with  physiology ;  geology,  as  opposed  to  ther- 
mology  and  chemistry.  In  an  abstract  science  a  proba- 
bility is  of  no  account ;  it  is  but  a  momentary  halt  on 
the  road  to  certainty,  and  a  hint  for  fresh  experiments. 

Inasmuch  as  abstract  science  in  general,  and  mathe- 

R  & 


610  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

matics  in  particular,  afford  no  practice  in  the  estimation 
of  conflicting  probabilities,  which  is  the  kind  of  sagacity 
most  required  in  the  conduct  of  practical  affairs,  it  fol- 
lows that,  when  made  so  exclusive  an  occupation  as  to 
prevent  the  mind  from  obtaining  enough  of  this  necessary 
practice  in  other  ways,  it  does  worse  than  not  cultivate  the 
faculty — it  prevents  it  from  being  acquired,  2iT\di  pro  tanto 
unfits  the  person  for  the  general  business  of  life.  It  is  na- 
tural that  people  who  are  bad  judges  of  probability,  should 
be,  according  to  their  temperament,  unduly  credulous  or 
unreasonably  sceptical ;  both  which  charges  our  author, 
with  great  earnestness  and  a  heavy  artillery  of  authori- 
ties, drives  home  against  the  mathematicians.  But  he 
would  have  made  little  progress  towards  proving  his 
case,  even  by  a  much  more  complete  catalogue  of  the 
intellectual  defects  of  a  mathematician  who  is  nothing 
but  a  mathematician  A  person  may  be  keenly  alive  to 
these,  and  may  hate  them,  as  M.  Comte  did,  with  a  per- 
fect hatred,  while  upholding  mathematical  instruction 
as  not  only  an  useful  but  the  indispensable  first  stage  of 
all  scientific  education  worthy  of  the  name.*  Nor  can 
any  reasonable  view  of  the  subject  refuse  to  recognise, 
in  the  very  faults  which  our  author  imputes  to  mathe- 
maticians, the  excesses  of  a  most  valuable  quality.  Let 
us  be  assured  that  for  the  formation  of  a  well-trained 
intellect,  it  is  no  slight  recommendation  of  a  study,  that 
it  is  the  means  by  which  the  mind  is  earliest  and  most 
easily  brought  to  maintain  within  itself  a  standard  of 

*  I  do  not  know  that  the  logical  value  of  mathematics  has  ever  been 
more  finely  and  discriminatingly  appreciated  than  by  M.  Comte  in  his  latest 
work,  "Synthese  Subjective"  (p.  98).  "  Bornee  a  son  vrai  domaine,  la  raison 
**  mathematique  y  peut  admirablement  remplir  I'ofEce  universel  de  la  saine 
"  logique :  induire  pour  deduire,  afin  de  construire.  Rcnonfant  a  de  vaines 
"  pretentions,  elle  sent  que  ses  meilleurs  succes  restent  toujours  incapables 
"  de  nous  faire,  partout  ailleurs,  induire,  ou  meme  deduire,  et  surtout 
"  construire.  Elle  se  contente  de  fournir,  dans  le  domaine  le  plus  t'avo- 
*'  rable,  un  type  de  clarte,  de  precision,  et  de  consistance,  dont  la  contem- 
"  plation  familiere  peut  seule  disposer  I'esprit  a  rendre  les  autres  concep- 
"  tions  aussi  parfaites  que  le  comporte  leur  nature.  Sa  reaction  generale, 
"  plus  negative  que  positive,  doit  surtout  consister  a  nous  inspirer  partout 
"  une  invincible  repugnance  pour  le  vague,  I'incoherence,  et  I'obscurite,  que 
"  nous  pouvons  reellement  eviter  envera  des  pens^es  quelconqv  es,  si  nous 
"  y  faisons  assez  d'efOorts," 


ON   THE    STUDY    OF    MATHEMATICS.  611 

complete  proof.  A  mind  thus  furnished,  and  not  duly 
instructed  on  other  subjects,  may  commit  the  error  of 
expecting  in  all  proof  too  close  an  adherence  to  the  type 
with  which  it  is  familiar.  That  type  may  and  ou^-ht  to 
be  widened  by  greater  variety  of  culture ;  but  he  who 
has  never  acquired  it,  has  no  just  sense  of  the  difference 
between  what  is  proved  and  what  is  not  proved :  the 
first  foundation  of  the  scientific  habit  of  mind  has  not 
been  laid.  It  has  long  been  a  complaint  against  mathe- 
maticians that  they  are  hard  to  convince :  but  it  is  a  far 
greater  disqualification  both  for  philosophy,  and  for  the 
affairs  of  life,  to  be  too  easily  convinced;  to  have  too 
low  a  standard  of  proof.  The  only  sound  intellects  are 
those  which,  in  the  first  instance,  set  their  standard  of 
proof  high.  Practice  in  concrete  affairs  soon  teaches 
them  to  make  the  necessary  abatement :  but  they  retain 
the  consciousness,  without  which  there  is  no  sound  prac- 
tical reasoning,  that  in  accepting  inferior  evidence  be- 
cause there  is  none  better  to  be  had,  they  do  not  by  that 
acceptance  raise  it  to  completeness.  They  remain  aware 
of  what  is  wanting  to  it. 

Besides  accustoming  the  student  to  demand  complete 
proof,  and  to  know  when  he  has  not  obtained  it,  mathe- 
matical studies  are  of  immense  benefit  to  his  education 
by  habituating  him  to  precision.  It  is  one  of  the  pe- 
culiar excellences  of  mathematical  discipline,  that  the 
mathematician  is  never  satisfied  with  an  a  peupres.  He 
requires  the  exact  truth.  Hardly  any  of  the  non-mathe- 
matical sciences,  except  chemistry,  has  this  advantage. 
One  of  the  commonest  modes  of  loose  thought,  and 
sources  of  error  both  in  opinion  and  in  practice,  is  to 
overlook  the  importance  of  quantities.  Mathematicians 
and  chemists  are  taught  by  the  whole  course  of  their 
studies,  that  the  most  lundamental  differences  of  quality 
depend  on  some  very  slight  difference  in  proportional 
quantity ;  and  that  from  the  qualities  of  the  infiuenciug 
elements,  without  careful  attention  to  their  quantities, 
false  expectations  would  constantly  be  formed  as  to  the 
very  nature  and  essential  character  of  the  residt  pro- 

R  R  2 


612  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

duced.  If  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  mind  had  undergone  this 
improving  discipline,  we  should  not  have  found  him 
employing  the  most  precise  mathematical  terras  with 
the  laxity  which  is  habitual  in  his  writings.  For  in- 
stance ;  whenever  he  means  that  one  of  two  things 
diminishes  while  another  increases,  he  says  that  they 
are  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  one  another.  He  affirms 
this  of  the  Extension  and  Comprehension  of  a  general 
notion;*  of  the  number  of  objects  among  which  our 
attention  is  divided,  and  the  intensity  with  which  it  is 
applied  to  each  ;t  of  the  knowledge-giving  and  the 
sensation-giving  properties  of  an  impression  of  sense  ;J 
and  of  the  intensity  and  the  prolongation  of  an  energy. § 
That  an  inverse  ratio  is  the  name  of  a  definite  relation 
between  quantities,  seems  never  to  have  occurred  to 
him. 

Neither  is  it  a  small  advantage  of  mathematical 
studies,  even  in  their  poorest  and  most  meagre  form,  that 
they  at  least  habituate  the  mind  to  resolve  a  train  of 
reasoning  into  steps,  and  make  sure  of  each  step  before 
advancing  to  another.  If  the  practice  of  mathematical 
reasoning  gives  nothing  else,  it  gives  wariness  of  mind; 
it  accustoms  us  to  demand  a  sure  footing;  and  though  it 
leaves  us  no  better  judges  of  ultimate  premises  than  it 
{bund  us  (which  is  no  more  than  may  be  said  of  almost 
all  metaphysics)  at  least  it  does  not  suffer  us  to  let  in,  at 
any  of  the  joints  in  the  reasoning,  any  assumption  which 
we  have  not  previously  faced  in  the  shape  of  an  axiom, 
postulate,  or  definition.  This  is  a  merit  which  it  has  in 
common  with  Formal  Logic,  and  is  the  chief  ground  on 
which  some  have  thought  that  it  could  perform  the  func- 
tions and  supply  the  place  of  that  science ;  an  opinion  in 
which  I  by  no  means  agree. 

That  mathematics  "  do  not  cultivate  the  power  of 
generalization,"  II  which  to  our  author  appears  so  obvious 
a  truth  that  he  need  not  give  himself  the  trouble  of 

*  See,  among  other  passages,  Lectures,  iii.  146,  147. 

t  Ibid.  i.  246.  I  Ibid.  ii.  98. 

§  Ibid.  p.  439.  II  Discussions,  p.  282. 


ON    THE    STUDY    OF    MATHEMATICS.  613 

proving  it,  will  be  admitted  by  no  person  of  competent 
knowledge,  except  in  a  very  qualified  sense.  The  generali- 
zations of  mathematics,  are,  no  doubt,  a  different  thing 
from  the  generalizations  of  physical  science ;  but  in  the 
difficulty  of  seizing  them,  and  the  mental  tension  they 
require,  they  are  no  contemptible  preparation  for  the 
most  arduous  efforts  of  the  scientific  mind.  Even  the 
fundamental  notions  of  the  higher  mathematics,  from 
those  of  the  differential  calculus  upwards  are  products 
of  a  very  high  abstraction.  Merely  to  master  the  idea  of 
centrifugal  force,  or  of  the  centre  of  gravity,  are  efforts 
of  mental  analysis  surpassed  by  few  in  our  author's  meta- 
physics. To  perceive  the  mathematical  law  common  to 
the  results  of  many  mathematical  operations,  even  in  so 
simple  a  case  as  that  of  the  binomial  theorem,  involves 
a  vigorous  exercise  of  the  same  faculty  which  gave  us 
Kepler's  laws,  and  rose  through  those  laws  to  the  theory 
of  universal  gravitation.  Every  process  of  what  has 
been  called  Universal  Geometry — that  great  creation  of 
Descartes  and  his  successors,  in  which  a  single  train  of 
reasoning  solves  whole  classes  of  problems  at  once,  and 
demonstrates  properties  common  to  all  curves  or  sur- 
faces, and  others  common  to  large  groups  of  them — is  a 
practical  lesson  in  the  management  of  wide  generali- 
zations, and  abstraction  of  the  points  of  agreement  from 
those  of  difference  among  objects  of  great  and  confusing 
diversity,  to  which  the  most  purely  inductive  science 
cannot  furnish  many  superior.  Even  so  elementary  an 
operation  as  tiiat  of  abstracting  from  the  particular  con- 
figuration of  the  triangles  or  other  figures,  and  the  rela- 
tive situation  of  the  particular  lines  or  points,  in  the 
diagram  which  aids  the  apprehension  of  a  common  geo- 
metrical demonstration,  is  a  very  useful,  and  far  from 
being  always  an  easy,  exercise  of  the  faculty  of  gene- 
ralization so  strangely  imagined  to  have  no  place  or  part 
in  the  processes  of  mathematics. 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  allows  no  efficacy  to  mathematical 
studies  in  the  cultivation  of  any  valuable  intellectual 
habit,  except  the  single  one  of  continuous  attention.  "Are 


614  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

"  mathematics  then,"  he  asks,"^  "  of  no  value  as  an  instru- 
"  ment  of  mental  culture  ?  Nay,  do  they  exercise  only  to 
"  distort  the  mind?  To  this  we  answer:  That  their  study, 
"  if  pursued  in  moderation  and  efficiently  counteracted, 
"  may  be  beneficial  in  the  correction  of  a  certain  vice,  and 
"  in  the  formation  of  its  corresponding  virtue.  The  vice 
"  is  the  habit  of  mental  distraction  ;  the  virtue  the  habit 
"  of  continuous  attention.  This  is  the  single  benefit,  to 
"  which  the  study  of  mathematics  can  justly  pretend,  in 
"  the  cultivation  of  the  mind."  He  adds,  truly  enough,! 
"  But  mathematics  are  not  the  only  study  which  cultivates 
"  the  attention  :  neither  is  the  kind  and  degree  of  atten- 
"  tion  which  they  tend  to  induce,  the  kind  and  degree  of 
"  attention  which  our  other  and  higher  speculations 
"  require  and  exercise."  So  that,  according  to  him, 
there  is  no  purpose  answered  by  mathematics  in  general 
education,  but  one  which  would  be  better  fulfilled  by 
something  else. 

Without  stopping  to  express  my  amazement  at  the 
assertion  that  the  student  of  mathematics  exercises  no 
mental  faculty  but  that  of  continuous  attention,  I  will 
avail  myself  of  an  admission  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
cannot  help  making,  but  the  lull  force  of  which  he  does 
not  perceive.  "  We  are  far,"  he  says, J  "from  meaning 
"  hereby  to  disparage  the  mathematical  genius  which 
"  invents  new  methods  and  formulae,  or  new  and  felicitous 

"  applications  of  the  old Unlike  their  divergent 

"  studies,  the  inventive  talents  of  the  mathematician  and 
"  philosopher  in  fact  approximate."  Was,  then,  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  so  ill-acquainted  with  everything  deserving 
the  name  of  mathematical  tuition  as  to  suppose  that  the 
inventive  powers  which,  in  their  higher  degree,  constitute 
mathematical  genius,  are  not  called  forth  and  fostered 
in  the  process  of  teaching  mathematics  to  the  merest 
tyro?  What  sort  of  mathematical  instruction  is  it  of 
which,  solving  problems  forms  no  part?  We  come, 
within  a  page  afterwards,  to  the  following  almost  incre- 

*  Discussions,  pp.  313,  314.  f  Ibid.  p.  322. 

J  Ibid.  p.  290. 


ON   THE   STUDY    OP    MATHEMATICS.  615 

dible  announcement  :*  "  Mathematical  demonstration  is 
"  solely  occupied  in  deducing  conclusions ;  probable 
"  reasoning,  principally  concerned  in  looking  out  for 
"  premises."  Sir  W.  Hamilton  thinks  he  can  never  be 
severe  enough  upon  Cambridge  for  laying  any  stress  on 
mathematics  as  an  iostrument  of  mental  instruction. 
Did  he  ever  turn  over,  I  do  not  say  a  volume  of  Cambridge 
Problems,  for  these,  it  may  be  said,  test  the  knowledge 
of  the  pupil  rather  than  his  inventive  powers,  and  may 
be  an  exercise  chiefly  of  memory  :  but  did  he  ever  see 
two  such  volumes  as  Bland's  Algebraical  and  Geometrical 
Problems  ?  Did  he  really  imagine  that  working  these 
was  not  "  looking  out  for  premises  ?"  He  seems  actually 
to  have  thought  that  learning  mathematics  meant 
cramming  it ;  and  apparently  believed  that  a  mathema- 
tical tutor  resolves  all  the  equations  himself,  and  merely 
asks  his  pupil  to  follow  the  solutions.  For  in  every 
problem  which  the  pupil  himself  solves,  or  theorem  which 
he  demonstrates,  not  having  previously  seen  it  solved  or 
demonstrated,  the  same  faculties  are  exercised  which,  in 
their  higher  degrees,  produced  the  greatest  discoveries  in 
geometry.  Mathematical  teaching,  therefore,  even  as 
now  carried  on,  trains  tha  mind  to  capacities,  which,  by 
our  author's  admission,  are  of  the  closest  kin  to  those  of 
the  greatest  metaphysician  and  philosopher.  There  is 
some  colour  of  truth  for  the  opposite  doctrine  in  the 
case  of  elementary  algebra.  The  resolution  of  a  common 
equation  can  be  reduced  to  almost  as  mechanical  a  process 
as  the  working  of  a  sum  in  arithmetic.  The  reduction 
of  the  question  to  an  equation,  however,  is  no  mechanical 
operation,  but  one  which,  according  to  the  degree  of 
its  difficulty,  requires  nearly  every  possible  grade  ot 
ingenuity :  not  to  speak  of  the  new,  and  in  the  present 
state  of  science  insoluble,  equations,  which  start  up  at 
every  fresh  step  attempted  in  the  application  of  mathe- 
matics to  other  branches  of  knowledge.  On  all  this.  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  never  bestows  a  thought.  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  point  out  that  any  other  study,  pursued  in 

•  DiBCUssiona,  p.  291. 


616  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

the  manner  in  which  he  supposes  mathematics  to  be, 
would  as  little  exercise  any  other  faculty  than  that  of 
"  continuous  attention"  as  mathematics  would.  Next 
to  metaphysics,  the  study  he  most  patronizes  is  that  of 
languages ;  of  which  he  has  so  lofty  an  opinion,  as  to 
say*  that  "  to  master,  for  example,  the  Minerva  of 
"  Sanctius  with  its  commentators,  is,  I  conceive,  a  far 
"  more  profitable  exercise  of  mind  than  to  conquer  the 
"  Principia  of  Newton :"  we  may  at  least  say  that  he 
was  a  better  judge  of  the  profit  that  might  be  derived 
from  it.  I,  also,  rate  very  highly  the  value,  as  a  discipline 
to  the  mind,  of  the  thorough  grammatical  study  of  any 
of  the  more  logically  constructed  languages :  but  if  the 
study  consisted  in  learning  the  Minerva  of  Sanctius,  or 
its  commentators  either,  by  rote,  I  believe  the  benefit 
derived  would  be  about  the  same  with  that  which  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  considered  to  result  from  the  exercise  of 
"  continuous  attention"  in  mathematics. 

It  is  a  characteristic  fact,  that  when  the  paper  "  on 
the  Study  of  Mathematics"  originally  appeared  as  an 
article  in  the  Edinburgh  Btwiew,  no  mention  was  made 
in  it  of  Mixed  or  Applied  Mathematics :  the  little  which 
now  appears  on  that  subject  being  a  subsequent  addition, 
called  forth  by  Dr.  Whewell's  reply.  Dr.  Whewell  must 
have  looked  down  from  a  considerable  height  upon  an 
assault  on  the  utility  of  Mathematics,  in  which  the  part 
of  it  that,  in  the  opinion  of  its  rational  defenders,  consti- 
tutes three-fourths  of  its  utility,  was  silently  overlooked. 
When  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  attention  was  called  to  what 
he  had  previously  omitted  to  think  of,  this  is  the  way  in 
which  he  disposes  of  it  :t  "  Mathematics  can  be  applied 
"  to  objects  of  experience  only  in  so  far  as  these  are 
"  measurable ;  that  is,  in  so  far  as  they  come,  or  are 
"  supposed  to  come,  under  the  categories  of  extension 
"  and  number.  Applied  mathematics  are,  therefore, 
"  equally  limited  and  equally  unim proving  as  pure.  The 
"  sciences,  indeed,  with  which  mathematics  are  thus  as- 
"  sociated,  may  afford  a  more  profitable  exercise  of  mind ; 

•  Discussions,  note  to  p.  268.  f  Ibid.  pp.  334,  335. 


ON    THE    STUDY    OF    MATHEMATICS.  617 

"  but  this  is  only  in  so  far  as  tliey  supply  the  matter  of 
"  observation,  and  of  probable  reasoning,  and  therefore 
"  before  this  matter  is  hypothetically  subjected  to  mathe- 
"  matical  demonstration  or  calculus." 

This  passage  amounts  to  proof  that  the  writer  simply 
did  not  know  what  applied  mathematics  mean.  The 
words  are  those  of  a  person  who  had  heard  that  there 
was  such  a  thing,  but  knew  absolutely  nothing  about 
what  it  was. 

Applied  mathematics  is  not  the  measurement  of  ex- 
tcDsion  and  number.  It  is  the  measurement  by  means  of 
extension  and  number,  of  other  quantities  which  exten- 
sion and  number  are  marks  of;  and  the  ascertainment 
by  means  of  quantities  of  all  sorts,  of  those  qualities  of 
things  which  quantities  are  marks  of. 

For  the  information  of  readers  who  are  no  better  in- 
formed than  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  and  the  reminding  of 
those  who  are,  I  will  illustrate  this  general  statement  by 
bringing  it  down  to  particulars ;  which  a  person,  himself 
of  very  slender  mathematical  acquirements,  can  do,  pro- 
vided he  has  studied  the  science  as  every  philosophical 
student  ought  to  study  it,  but  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has 
not  done,  with  especial  reference  to  its  Methods. 

The  first,  and  typical  example  of  the  application  of 
mathematics  to  the  indirect  investigation  of  truth,  is 
within  the  limits  of  the  pure  science  itself;  the  applica- 
tion of  algebra  to  geometry ;  the  introduction  of  which, 
far  more  than  any  of  his  metaphysical  speculations,  has 
immortalized  the  name  of  Descartes,  and  constitutes  the 
greatest  single  step  ever  made  in  the  progress  of  the 
exact  sciences.  Its  rationale  is  simple.  It  is  grounded 
on  the  general  truth,  that  the  position  of  every  point, 
the  direction  of  every  line,  and  consequently  the  shape 
and  magnitude  of  every  enclosed  space,  may  be  fixed  by 
the  length  of  perpendiculars  thrown  down  upon  two 
straight  lines,  or  (when  the  third  dimension  of  space  is 
taken  into  account)  upon  three  plane  surfaces,  meeting 
one  another  at  right  angles  in  the  same  point.  A  con- 
sequence, or  rather  a  part,  of  this  general  truth,  is  that 


618  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

curve  lines  and  surfaces  may  be  determined  by  their 
equations.  If  from  any  number  of  points  in  a  curve  line 
or  surface,  perpendiculars  are  drawn  to  two  rectangular 
axes,  or  to  three  rectangular  planes,  there  exists  between 
the  lengths  of  these  perpendiculars  a  relation  of  quantity, 
which  is  always  the  same  for  the  same  curve,  or  surface, 
and  is  expressed  by  an  equation  in  which  these  variable 
are  combined  with  certain  constant  qualities.  From 
this  relation,  every  other  property  of  the  curve  or  surface 
may  always  be  deduced.  In  this  way,  numbers  become 
the  means  of  ascertaining  truths  not  numerical.  The 
peripher3^  of  an  eUipse  is  not  a  number ;  but  a  certain 
numerical  relation  between  straight  lines  is  a  mark  of  an 
ellipse,  being  proved  to  be  an  inseparable  accompaniment 
of  it.  The  equation  which  expresses  this  characteristic 
mark  of  any  curve,  may  be  handed  over  to  algebraists, 
to  deduce  from  it,  through  the  properties  of  numbers, 
any  other  numerical  relation  which  depends  on  it ;  with 
the  certainty  that  when  the  conclusion  is  translated  back 
again  from  symbols  into  words,  it  will  come  out  a  real, 
and  perhaps  previously  unknown,  geometrical  property 
of  the  curve. 

In  such  an  example  as  this,  the  application  of  algebra 
to  geometry  appears  only  in  its  most  elementary  form  ; 
but  its  extent  is  indefinite,  and  its  flights  almost  beyond 
the  reach  of  measurement.  Its  general  scheme  may  be 
thus  stated  :  In  order  to  resolve  any  question,  either  of 
quality  or  quantity,  concerning  a  line  or  space,  find  some- 
thing whose  magnitude,  if  known,  would  give  the  solu- 
tion required,  and  which  stands  in  some  known  relation 
to  the  rectangular  co-ordinates  (for  instance,  in  the  pro- 
blem of  Tangents,  the  length  of  the  subtangent).  Ex- 
press this  known  relation  in  an  equation  :  if  the  equation 
can  be  resolved,  we  have  solved  the  geometrical  problem. 
Or  if  the  question  be  the  converse  one — not  what  are  the 
properties  of  a  given  line  or  space,  but  what  line  or  space 
is  indicated  by  a  given  property  ;  find  what  relation  be- 
tween rectangular  co-ordinates  that  property  requires  : 
express  it  in  an  equation,  and  this  equation,  or  some 


ON    THE   STUDY    OF    MATHEMATICS.  619 

other  deducible  from  it,  will  be  the  equation  of  the  curve 
or  surface  sought.  If  it  be  a  known  curve  or  surface, 
this  process  will  point  it  out ;  if  not,  we  shall  have  ob- 
tained tlie  necessary  starting  point  for  its  study. 

This  application  of  one  branch  of  mathematics  to 
another  branch,  ranks  as  the  first  step  in  Applied  Mathe- 
matics. The  second  is  the  application  to  Mechanics.  The 
object-matter  of  Mechanics  is  the  general  laws,  or  theory, 
of  Force  in  the  abstract,  that  is,  of  forces,  considered 
independently  of  their  origin.  As  an  extension  is  not  a 
number,  though  a  numerical  fact  may  be  a  mark  of  an 
extension ;  so  a  force  is  neither  a  number  nor  an  exten- 
sion. But  a  force  is  only  cognisable  through  its  effects, 
and  the  effects  by  which  Ibrces  are  best  known  are  effects 
in  extension.  The  measure  of  a  force,  is  the  space  through 
which  it  will  carry  a  body  of  given  magnitude  in  a  given 
time.  Quantities  of  Ibrce  are  thus  ascertained,  through 
marks  which  are  quantities  of  extension.  The  other 
properties  of  forces  are,  their  direction  (a  question  of  ex- 
tension, which  has  already  been  reduced  to  a  numerical 
relation  between  co-ordinates),  and  the  nature  of  the 
motion  which  they  generate,  either  singly  or  in  com- 
bination ;  which  is  a  mixed  question  oi"  direction  and  of 
magnitude  in  extension.  All  questions  of  Force,  there- 
fore, can  be  reduced  to  questions  of  direction  and  of 
magnitude :  and  as  all  questions*  of  direction  or  magni- 
tude are  capable  of  being  reduced  to  equations  between 
numbers,  every  question  which  can  be  raised  respecting 
Force  abstractedly  from  its  origin,  can  be  resolved  if  the 
corresponding  algebraical  equation  can. 

While  the  laws  of  JSI umber  thus  underlie  the  laws  of 
Extension,  and  these  two  underlie  the  Laws  of  Force,  so 
do  the  laws  of  Force  underlie  all  the  other  laws  of  the 
material  universe.  Nature,  as  it  falls  within  our  ken,  is 
composed  of  a  multitude  of  forces,  of  which  the  origin 
(at  least  the  immediate  origin)  is  different,  and  the  effects 
of  which  on  our  senses  are  extremely  various.  But  all 
these  forces  agree  in  producing  motions  in  space ;  and 
even  those  of  their  effects  which  are  not  actual  motions. 


620  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

nevertheless  travel ;  are  propagated  through  spaces,  in 
determinate  times  :  they  are  all,  therefore,  amenable  to, 
and  conform  to,  the  laws  of  extension  and  number. 
Often,  indeed,  we  have  no  means  of  measuring  these 
spaces  and  times ;  nor,  if  we  could,  are  the  resources  of 
mathematics  sufficient  to  enable  us,  in  cases  of  great 
complexity,  to  arrive  at  the  quantities  of  things  we 
cannot  directly  measure,  through  those  which  we  can. 
Fortunately,  however,  we  can  do  this,  sufficiently  for  all 
practical  purposes,  in  the  case  of  the  great  cosmic  forces, 
gravitation  and  light,  and  to  a  less  but  still  a  consider- 
able extent,  heat  and  electricity.  And  here  the  domain 
of  Applied  Mathematics,  for  the  present,  ends.  To  it 
we  are  indebted,  not  only  for  all  we  know  of  the  laws  of 
these  great  and  universal  agencies,  considered  as  con- 
nected bodies  of  truth,  but  also  for  the  one  complete  type 
and  model  of  the  investigation  of  Nature  by  deductive 
reasoning ;  the  ascertainment  of  the  special  laws  of 
nature  by  means  of  the  general.  I  will  not  offer  to  the 
understanding  of  any  one  who  knows  what  this  opera- 
tion is,  the  affront  of  asking  him  if  it  is  all  performed 
"  belbre"  the  matter  is  "  hypothetical ly  subjected  to 
mathematical  demonstration  or  calculus." 

In  being  the  great  instrument  of  Deductive  investi- 
gation, applied  mathematics  comes  to  be  ako  the  source  of 
our  principal  inductions,  which  invariably  depend  on 
previous  deductions.  For  where  the  inaccessibility  or 
unmanageableness  of  the  phsenomena  precludes  the  ne- 
cessary experiments,  mathematical  deduction  often  sup- 
plies their  place,  by  making  us  acquainted  with  points  of 
resemblance  which  could  not  have  been  reached  by  direct 
observation.  Phsenomena  apparently  very  remote  from 
one  another,  are  found,  in  the  mode  of  their  accomplish- 
ment, to  follow  the  same  or  very  similar  numerical  laws  ; 
and  the  mind,  grasping  up  seemingly  heterogeneous  na- 
tural agencies  which  have  the  same  equation,  and  classing 
them  together,  often  lays  a  ground  lor  the  recognition 
of  them  as  having  either  a  common,  or  an  analogous, 
origin.     What  were  previously  thought  to  be  distinct, 


ON    THE   STUDY    OF   MATHEMATICS.  Q'2l 

powers  in  Nature,  are  identified  with  each  other,  by  as- 
certaining that  they  produce  similar  effects  according  to 
the  same  mathematical  laws.  It  was  thus  that  the  force 
which  governs  the  planetary  motions  was  shown  to  be 
identical  with  that  by  which  bodies  fall  to  the  ground. 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  would  probably  have  admitted  that  the 
original  discovery  of  this  truth  required  as  great  a  reach 
of  intellect  as  has  ever  yet  been  displayed  in  abstract 
speculation.  But  is  no  exercise  of  intellect  needed  to 
apprehend  the  proof?  Is  it  like  an  experiment  in 
chemistry  or  an  observation  in  anatomy,  which  may  re- 
quire mind  for  its  origination,  but  to  recognise  which, 
when  once  made,  requires  only  eyesight  ?  Is  "continuous 
attention"  the  only  mental  capacity  required  here  ?  To 
think  so  would  require  an  ignorance  of  the  subject 
greater  than  can  be  imputed  to  any  educated  mind,  not 
to  speak  of  a  philosopher. 

In  the  achievements  which  still  remain  to  be  effected 
in  the  way  of  scientific  generalization,  it  is  not  probable 
that  the  direct  employment  of  mathematics  will  be  to 
any  great  extent  available :  the  nature  of  the  phaeno- 
mena  precludes  such  an  employment  for  a  long  time  to 
come — perhaps  for  ever.  But  the  process  itself — the 
deductive  investigation  of  Nature ;  the  application  of 
elementary  laws,  generalized  from  the  more  simple  cases, 
to  disentangle  the  pha;nomena  of  complex  cases — ex- 
plaining as  much  of  tliem  as  can  be  so  explained,  and 
putting  in  evidence  the  nature  and  limits  of  the  irre- 
ducible residuum,  so  as  to  suggest  fresh  observations 
preparatory  to  recommencing  the  same  process  with 
additional  data :  t/iis  is  common  to  all  science,  moral  and 
metaphysical  included;  and  the  greater  the  difficulty, 
the  more  needful  is  it  that  the  enquirer  should  come 
prepared  with  an  exact  understanding  of  the  requisites 
of  this  mode  of  investigation,  and  a  mental  type  of  its 
perfect  realization.  In  the  great  problems  of  physical 
generalization  now  occupying  the  higher  scientific  minds, 
chemistry  seems  destined  to  an  important  and  conspi- 
cuous participation,  by  supplying,  as  mathematics  did  in 


622  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

the  cosmic  phsenomena,  many  of  the  premises  of  the 
deduction,  as  well  as  part  of  the  preparatory  discipline. 
But  this  use  of  chemistry  is  as  yet  only  in  its  dawn ; 
while,  as  a  training  in  the  deductive  art,  its  utmost  ca- 
pacity can  never  approach  to  that  of  mathematics :  and 
in  the  great  enquiries  of  the  moral  and  social  sciences, 
to  which  neither  of  the  two  is  directly  applicable,  mathe- 
matics (I  always  mean  Applied  Mathematics)  affords  the 
only  sufficiently  perfect  type.  Up  to  this  time,  I  may 
venture  to  say  that  no  one  ever  knew  what  deduction  is, 
as  a  means  of  investigating  the  laws  of  nature,  who  had 
not  learnt  it  from  mathematics  -,  nor  can  any  one  hope 
to  understand  it  thoroughly,  who  has  not,  at  some  time 
of  his  life,  known  enough  of  mathematics  to  be  familiar 
with  the  instrument  at  work.  Had  Sir  W.  Hamilton  been 
j  so,  he  would  probably  have  cancelled  the  two  volumes 
of  his  Lectures  on  Logic,  and  begun  again  on  a  different 
system,  in  which  we  should  have  heard  less  about  Con- 
cepts and  more  about  Things,  less  about  Forms  of 
Thought,  and  more  about  grounds  of  Knowledge. 

Nor  is  even  this  the  whole  of  what  the  enquirer  loses, 
who  knows  not  scientific  Deduction  in  this  its  most  per- 
fect form.  To  have  an  inadequate  conception  of  one  of 
the  two  instruments  by  which  we  acquire  our  knowledge 
of  nature,  and  consequently  an  imperfect  comprehension 
even  of  the  other  in  its  higher  forms,  is  not  all.  He  is 
almost  necessarily  without  any  sufficient  conception  of 
human  knowledge  itself  as  an  organic  whole.  He  can 
have  no  clear  perception  of  science  as  a  system  of  truths 
flowing  out  of,  and  confirming  and  corroborating,  one 
another;  in  which  one  truth  sums  up  a  multitude  of 
others,  and  explains  them,  special  truths  being  merely 
general  ones  modified  by  specialities  of  circumstance. 
He  can  but  imperfectly  understand  the  absorption  of 
concrete  truths  into  abstract,  and  the  additional  certainty 
given  to  theorems  drawn  from  specific  experience,  when 
they  can  be  affiliated  as  corollaries  on  general  laws  of 
nature — a  certainty  more  entire  than  any  direct  obser- 
vation can  give.    Neither,  therefore,  can  he  perceive  how 


ON   THE    STUDY   OP   MATHEMATICS.  623 

the  larger  inductions  reflect  an  increase  of  certainty  even 
upon  those  narrower  ones  from  which  they  were  them- 
selves generalized,  by  reconciling  superficial  inconsisten- 
cies, and  converting  apparent  exceptions  into  real  confir- 
mations.* To  see  these  things  requires  more  than  a 
mere  mathematician;  but  the  ablest  mind  which  Itas 
never  gone  through  a  course  of  mathematics  has  small 
chance  of  ever  perceiving  them. 

In  the  face  of  such  considerations,  it  is  a  very  small 
achievement  to  fill  thirty  octavo  pages  with  the  ill- 
natured  things  which  persons  of  the  most  miscellaneous 
character,  through  a  series  of  ages,  have  said  about  mathe- 
maticians, from  a  sneer  of  the  Cynic  Diogenes  to  a  sar- 
casm of  Gibbon,  or  a  colloquial  platitude  of  Horace 
Walpole ;  without  any  discrimination  as  to  how  many 
of  the  persons  quoted  were  entitled  to  any  opinion  at  all 
on  such  a  subject ;  and  with  such  entire  disregard  of  all 
that  gives  weight  to  authority,  as  to  include  men  who 
lived  and  died  before  algebra  was  invented,  before  the 
conic  sections  had  been  defined  and  studied  by  the 
mathematicians  of  Alexandria,  or  the  first  lines  of  the 
theory  of  statics  had  been  traced  by  the  genius  of  Archi- 
medes ;  men  whose  whole  mathematical  knowledge  con- 
sisted of  a  clumsy  arithmetic,  and  the  mere  elements 
of  geometry.  Had  there  been  twenty  times  as  many  of 
these  testimonies,  what  proportion  of  them  would  have 
been  of  any  value  ?  Until  quite  recently,  the  professors 
of  the  difi'erent  arts  and  sciences  have  made  it  a  conside- 

*  Ignorance  of  this  important  principle  of  the  logic  of  induction,  or  want 
of  familiarity  with  it,  continually  leads  to  gross  misapplications,  even  by 
able  writers,  of  the  logic  of  ratiocination.  For  instance,  we  are  constantly 
told  that  the  uniformity  of  the  course  of  nature  cannot  be  itself  an  induc- 
tion, since  every  inductive  reasoning  assumes  it,  and  the  premise  must  have 
been  known  before  the  conclusion.  Those  who  argue  in  this  manner  can 
never  have  directed  their  attention  to  the  continual  process  of  giving  and 
taking,  in  respect  of  certainty,  which  reciprocally  goes  on  between  thia 
great  premise  and  all  the  narrower  truths  of  experience ;  the  effect  of  which 
18,  that,  though  originally  a  generalization  from  the  more  obvious  of  the 
narrower  truths,  it  ends  by  having  a  fulness  of  certainty  which  overflows 
upon  these,  and  raises  the  proof  of  them  to  a  higher  level ;  so  that  its  rela- 
tion to  them  is  reversed,  and  instead  of  an  inference  from  them,  it  becomes 
a  principle  from  which  any  one  of  them  may  be  deduced. 


624  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

rable  part  of  their  occupation  to  cry  down  one  another's 
pursuits ;    and  men    of  the  world  and  litterateurs  have 
been,  in  all  ages,  ready  and  eager  to  join  with  every  set 
of  them  against  the  rest :  the  man   who  dares  to  know 
what  they  neither  know  nor  care  for,  and  to  value  him- 
self on  the  knowledge,  having  always  and  everywhere 
been    regarded   as   the   common   enemy.      Did  Sir  W. 
Hamilton   suppose  that  a  person   of  half  his   reading 
would  have  any  difficulty  in  furnishing,  at  a  few  hours' 
notice,  an  equally  long  list  of  amenities  on  the  subject 
of    grammarians    or    of    metaphysicians?      When  our 
author  does  get  hold  of  a  witness  who  has  a  claim  to  a 
hearing,  the  witness  is  pressed  into  the  service  without 
any  sifting  of  what  he  really   says ;  it  make  no  diffe- 
rence whether  he  asserts  that  the  study  of  mathematics 
does  harm,  or  only  that  it  does  not  simply  suffice  for  all 
possible  good.     One  of  the  authorities  on  whom  most 
stress  is  laid  is  that  of  Descartes.     I  extract  the  impor- 
tant part  of  the  quotation  as  our  author  gives  it,  partly 
from  Descartes  himself  and  partly  from  Baillet,  his  bio- 
grapher.*   The  Italics  are  Sir  W.  Hamilton's.     "  It  was 
*'  now  a  long  time,  says  Baillet,  since  he  had  been  con- 
"  vinced  of  the  small  utility  of  the  mathematics,  especially 
"  when  studied  on  their  own  account,  and  not  applied  to 
"  other  things.     There  was  nothing,  in  truth,  which  ap- 
**  peared  to  him  more  futile  than  to  occupy  ourselves  with 
*'  simple  numbers  and  imaginary  figures,  as  if  it  were 
"  proper  to  confine  ourselves  to  these  trijles  (bagatelles) 
"  without  carrying  our  view  beyond.    There  even  seemed 
"  to   him   in   this    souaething  worse  than   useless.      His 
"  mMxim  was,  that  such  application  insensibly  disaccustomed 
"  us  to  the  use  of  our  reason,  and  made  us  run  the  danger 
"  of  losing  the  path  which  it  traces.     The  words  them- 
"  selves  of  Descartes  deserve  quotation :    Eevera  nihil 
"  inanius  est,  quam  circa  nudos  numeros  figurasque  ima- 
"  ginarias  ita  versari,  ut  velle  videamur  in  talium  nuga- 
*'  rum  cognitione  conquiescere,  atque  superficiariis  istis 
"  demonstrationibus,  quae  casu  ssepius  quam  arte  inveni- 
*  Discussions,  pp.  277,  278. 


ON    THE    STUDY    OF    MATHEMATICS.  625 

"  unter,  et  magis  ad  oculos  et  imaginationem  pertinent, 
"  quam  ad    intellectum,    sic  incubare,   ut  quodaramodo 
"  ipsa  rafione  uti  desuescamus  ;  simulque  nihil  intricatius, 
"  quam  tali  probandi  modo,   novas  difficultates  confusis 
"  numeris  involutasexpedire."  .    .    .  Bailletijoeson  :  "In 
"  a  letter  to    Mersenne,  written  in  1630,  M.  Descartes 
"  recalled  to  him  that  he  had  renounced  the  study  of  ma- 
"  thematicsfor  many  years :  and  that  he  was  anxious  not  to 
"  lose  any  more  of  his  time  in  the  barren  operations  of  qeo- 
"  metry  and  arithmetic,  studies  which  never  lead  to  anything 
"  important!'     Finally,  speaking  of  the  general  character 
of  the    philosopher,  Baillet  adds : — "  In  regard  to  the 
"  rest  of  mathematics"  (he  had  just   spoken  of  astro- 
**  nomy — which  Descartes  thought,  "  though  he  dreamt  in 
"  it  himself  only  a  loss  of  time')  "  in  regard  to  the  rest  of 
"  mathematics,  those  who  know  the  rank  which  he  held 
*'  above  all    mathematicians,  ancient   and  modern,  will 
"  agree  that  he  was  the  man  in  the  world  best   qualified 
"  to  judge  them.     We  have  observed  that,  after  having 
"  studied  these  sciences  to  the  bottom,  he  had  renounced 
"  them   as  of  no  use  for  the  conduct  of  life  and  solace  of 
"  mankind^ 

Whoever  reads  this  passage  as  if  it  were  all  printed  in 
Roman  characters,  and  declines  to  submit  his  under- 
standing to  the  italics  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  intro- 
duced, will  perceive  the  following  three  things.  First, 
that  Descartes  was  not  speaking  of  the  study  of  mathe- 
matics, but  of  its  exclusive  study.  His  objection  is  to 
stopping  there,  without  proceeding  to  anything  ulterior : 
conquiescere,  incubare.  Secondly,  that  he  was  speaking 
only  of  pure  mathematics,  as  distinguished  from  its 
applications,  and  under  the  belief,  how  prodigiously- 
erroneous  we  now  know,  that  it  did  not  admit  of  appli- 
cations of  any  importance.  Finally,  that  his  disparage- 
ment of  the  pursuit,  even  as  thus  limited — his  repre- 
sentation of  it  ?is  "  nuga"  as  "a  loss  of  time,"  rested 
mainly  on  a  ground  which  Sir  W.  Hamilton  gave  up, 
the  unimportance  of  its  object-matter.  It  was  a  repeti- 
tion of  the  objection  of  Socrates,  whom  also  our  author 

s  s 


626  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

thinks  it  worth  while  to  cite  as  an  authority  on  such  a 
question,  and  who  '"'  did*  not  perceive  of  what  utility 
"  they"  (mathematical  studies)  "  could  be,  calculated  as 
"  they  were  to  consume  the  life  of  a  man,  and  to  turn 
"  him  away  from  many  other  and  important  acquire- 
"  ments,".  Such  an  opinion,  in  the  days  of  Socrates,  and 
from  one  whose  glorious  business  it  was  to  recal  the 
minds  of  speculative  men  to  dialectics  and  morals,  reflects 
no  discredit  on  his  great  mind.  But  the  objection  is  one 
which  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  with  every  thinker  of  the  last 
two  centuries,  disclaims.  "  The  question,"  he  expressly 
says,t  "  does  not  regard  the  value  of  mathematical 
**  science,  considered  in  itself,  or  in  its  objective  results, 
"  but  the  utility  of  mathematical  studi/,  that  is,  in  its 
"  subjective  effect,  as  an  exercise  of  mind."  All  that 
Descartes  said  against  it  in  this  aspect  (at  least  in  the 
passage  quoted,  which  we  may  suppose  to  be  one  of  the 
strongest)  is,  that  by  affording  other  objects  of  thought, 
it  diverts  the  mind  from  the  use  of  ipsa  ratio,  that  is, 
from  the  study  of  pure  mental  abstractions ;  which  Des- 
cartes, to  the  great  detriment  of  his  philosophy,  regarded 
as  of  much  superior  value  to  the  employment  of  the 
thoughts  upon  objects  of  sense,  "  quae  magis  ad  oculos 
"  et  imaginationem  pertinent." 

It  was  by  his  example,  rather  than  by  his  precepts, 
that  Descartes  was  destined  to  illustrate  the  unfavour- 
able side  of  the  intellectual  influence  of  mathematical 
studies ;  and  he  must  have  been  a  still  more  extra- 
ordinary man  than  he  was,  could  he  have  really  under- 
stood a  kind  of  mental  perversions  of  which  he  is  himself, 
in  the  history  of  philosophy,  the  most  prominent  example. 
Descartes  is  the  completest  type  which  history  presents 
of  the  purely  mathematical  type  of  mind — that  in  which 
the  tendencies  produced  by  mathematical  cultivation 
reign  unbalanced  and  supreme.  This  is  visible  not  only 
in  the  abuse  of  Deduction,  which  he  carried  to  a  greater 
length  than  any  distinguished  thinker  known  to  us,  not 
excepting  the  schoolmen  ;  but  even  more  so  in  the  cha- 

*  Discussions,  p.  323.  f  Ibid.  p.  266. 


ON    THE    STUDY  OP  MATHEMATICS.  627 

racter  of  the  premises  from  which  his  deductions  set  out. 
And  here  we  come  upon  the  one  really  grave  charge 
which  resf  s  on  the  mathematical  spirit,  in  respect  of  the 
influence  it  exercises  on  pursuits  other  than  mathematical. 
It  leads  men  to  place  their  ideal  of  Science  in  deriving 
all  knowledge  from  a  small  number  of  axiomatic  premises, 
accepted  as  self-evident,  and  taken  for  immediate  intui- 
tions of  reason.  This  is  what  Descartes  attempted  to 
do,  and  inculcated  as  the  thing  to  be  done :  and  as  he 
shares  with  only  one  other  name  the  honour  of  having 
given  his  impress  to  the  whole  character  of  the  modern 
speculative  movement,  the  consequences  of  his  error 
have  been  most  calamitous.  Nearly  everything  that  is 
objectionable,  along  with  much  of  what  is  admirable, 
in  the  character  of  French  thought,  whether  on  meta- 
physics, ethics,  or  politics,  is  directly  traceable  to  the 
fact  that  French  speculation  descends  from  Descartes 
instead  of  from  Bacon.*  All  reflecting  persons  in  Eng- 
land, and  many  in  France,  perceive  that  the  chief 
infirmities  of  French  thinking  arise  from  its  geometrical 
spirit ;  its  determination  to  evolve  its  conclusions,  even 
on  the  most  practical  subjects,  by  mere  deduction  from 
some  single  accepted  generalization :  the  generalization, 
too,  being  frequently  not  even  a  theorem,  but  a  practical 
rule,  supposed  to  be  obtained  directly  from  the  fountains 
of  reason  :  a  mode  of  thinking  which  erects  one-sidedness 
into  a  principle,  under  the  misapplied  name  of  logic,  and 
makes  the  popular  political  reasoning  in  France  resemble 
that  of  a  theologian  arguing  from  a  text,  or  a  lawyer 
from  a  maxim  of  law.     If  this  be  the  case  even  in  France, 

*  It  is  but  jost  to  add,  tliat  the  English  mode  of  thonght  has  suffered 
in  a  different,  but  almost  equally  injurious  manner,  by  its  exclusive 
following  of  what  it  imagined  to  be  the  teaching  of  Bacon,  being  in  reality 
a  slovenly  misconception  of  him,  leaving  on  one  side  the  whole  spirit  and 
scope  of  his  speculations.  The  philosopher  who  laboured  to  construct  a 
canon  of  scientific  Induction,  by  which  the  observations  of  mankind,  in- 
stead of  remaining  empirical,  might  be  so  combined  and  marshalled  as  to 
be  made  the  foundation  of  safe  general  theories,  little  expected  that  his 
name  would  become  the  stock  authority  for  disclaiming  genenilization, 
and  enthroning  empiricism,  under  the'  name  of  experience,  as  the  only 
golid  foundation  of  practice. 

SS    2 


628  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

it  is  still  worse  in  Germany,  the  whole  of  whose  specula- 
tive philosophy  is  an  emanation  from  Descartes,  and  to 
most  of  whose  thinkers  the  Baconian  point  of  view  is 
still  below  the  horizon.  Through  Spinoza,  who  gave  to 
his  system  the  very  forms  as  well  as  the  entire  spirit  of 
geometry ;  through  the  mathematician  Leibnitz,  who 
reigned  supreme  over  the  German  speculative  mind  for 
above  a  generation ;  with  its  spirit  temporarily  modified 
by  the  powerful  intellectual  individuality  of  Kant,  but 
flying  back  after  him  to  its  uncorrected  tendencies,  the 
geometrical  spirit  went  on  from  bad  to  worse,  until  in 
Schelling  and  Hegel  the  laws  even  of  physical  nature 
were  deduced  by  ratiocination  from  subjective  delive- 
rances of  the  mind.  The  whole  of  German  philosophical 
speculation  has  run  from  the  beginning  in  this  wrong 
groove,  and  having  only  recently  become  aware  of  the 
fact,  is  at  present  making  convulsive  efforts  to  get  out  of 
it.*  All  these  mistakes,  and  this  deplorable  waste  of 
time  and  intellectual  power  by  some  of  the  most  gifted 
and  cultivated  portions  of  the  human  race,  are  effects  of 
the  too  unqualified  predominance  of  the  mental  habits 
and  tendencies  engendered  by  elementary  mathematics. 
Applied  mathematics  in  its  post-Newtonian  develop- 
ment does  nothing  to  strengthen,  and  very  much  to 
correct,  these  errors,  provided  the  applications  are  studied 
in  such  a  manner  that  the  intellect  is  aware  of  what  it  is 
about,  and  does  not  go  to  sleep  over  algebraical  symbols ; 
a  didactic  improvement  which  Dr.  Whewell,  to  his  honour 
be  it  said,  was  earnestly  and  successfully  labouring  to 
introduce,  thus  practically  correcting  the  real  defects  of 
mathematics  as  a  branch  of  general  education,  at  the 
very  time  when  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  who  had  not  the 
smallest  insight  into  those  defects,  selected  him  for  the  im- 

*  The  character  here  drawn  of  German  thought  is,  I  hardly  need  say, 
not  intended  to  apply  to  such  a  man  as  Goethe,  or  to  those  who  received 
their  intellectual  impulse  from  him.  In  him,  indeed,  not  to  speak  of  his 
almost  universal  culture,  the  intellectual  operations  were  always  guided 
by  an  intense  spirit  of  observation  and  experiment,  and  a  constant  refe- 
rence to  the  exigencies,  outward  and  inward,  of  practical  human  life.  Such 
criticism  as  caU  justly  be  made  on  Goethe  as  a  thinker,  rests  on  entirely 
different  grounds. 


ON    THE    STDDT   OF    MATHEMATICS.  629 

mediate  recipient  of  an  attack  on  mathematics,  which  as  it 
only  included  what  Sir  W.  Hamilton  knew  of  the  subject, 
left  out  everything  which  was  much  worth  saying. 

It  is  not  solely  to  Mathematical  studies  that  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  professes  and  shows  hostility.  Physical  in- 
vestigations generally,  apart  from  their  material  fruits, 
he  holds  but  in  low  estimation.  We  have  seen  in  a 
former  chapter  how  singularly  unaware  he  is  of  the 
power  and  exertion  of  intellect  which  they  often  require. 
Touching  their  effect  on  the  mind,  he  makes  two  serious 
complaints,  which  come  out  at  the  very  commencement 
of  his  Lectures  on  Metaphysics.*  The  first  is,  that  the 
study  of  Physics  indisposes  persons  to  believe  in  Free- 
will. To  this  accusation  it  must  plead  guilty :  physical 
science  undoubtedly  has  that  tendency.  But  I  maintain 
that  this  is  only  because  physical  science  teaches  people 
to  judge  of  evidence.  If  the  free-will  doctrine  could 
be  proved,  there  is  nothing  in  the  habits  of  thought  en- 
gendered by  physical  science  that  would  indispose  any 
one  to  yield  to  the  evidence.  A  person  who  knows  only 
one  physical  science,  may  be  unable  to  feel  the  force  of  a 
kind  of  proof  different  from  that  which  is  customary  in 
his  department ;  but  any  one  who  is  generally  versed  in 
physical  science  is  accustomed  to  so  many  diH'erent  modes 
of  investigation,  that  he  is  well  prepared  to  feel  the  force 
of  whatever  is  really  proof.  Metaphysicians  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton's  school,  who  pursue  their  investigations 
without  regard  to  the  cautions  suggested  by  physical 
science,  are  equally  catholic  and  couiprehensiye  in  the 
wrong  way;  they  can  mistake  for  proof  anything  or 
everything  which  is  not  so,  provided  it  tends  to  form  an 
association  of  ideas  in  their  own  minds. 

The  other  objection  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  to  the  scien- 
tific study  of  the  laws  of  Matter,  is  one  which  we  should 
scarcely  nave  expected  from  him,  namely,  that  it  annihi- 
lates Wonder. 

"  Wonder,t  says  Aristotle,  is  the  first  cause  of  philo- 
**  sophy ;  but  in  the  discovery  that  all  existence  is  but 
•  Lectures,  i.  35,  42.  t  Ibid.  p.  37. 


630  SIR  WILLIAM  Hamilton's  opinions 

mechanism,  the  consummation  of  science  would  be  an 
extinction  of  the  very  interest  from  which  it  originally 
sprang.  '  Even  the  gorgeous  majesty  of  the  heavens,' 
says  a  great  religious  philosopher,*  '  the  object  of  a 
kneeling  adoration  to  an  infant  world,'  subdues  no  more 
the  mind  of  him  who  comprehends  the  one  mechanical 
law  by  which  the  planetary  systems  move,  maintain 
their  motion,  and  even  originally  form  themselves. 
He  no  longer  wonders  at  the  object,  infinite  as  it 
always  is,  but  at  the  human  intellect  alone  which  in  a 
Copernicus,  Kepler,  Gassendi,  Newton,  and  Laplace, 
was  able  to  transcend  the  object,  by  science  to  ter- 
minate the  miracle,  to  reave  the  heaven  of  its  divinities, 
and  to  exorcise  the  universe.  But  even  this,  the  only 
admiration  of  which  our  intelligent  faculties  are  now 
capable,  would  vanisli,  were  a  future  Hartley,  Darwin, 
Condillac,  or  Bonnet,  to  succeed  in  displaying  to  us  a 
mechanical  system  of  the  human  mind,  as  compre- 
hensive, intelligible,  and  satisfactory  as  the  Newtonian 
mechanism  of  the  heavens."  We  may  be  well  assured 
that  no  Hartley,  Darwin,  or  Condillac  will  obtain  a  hear- 
ing, if  the  "  great  religious  philosopher"  can  prevent  it. 

I  shall  not  enter  into  all  the  topics  suggested  by  this 
remarkable  argument.  I  shall  not  ask  whether,  after  all, 
it  is  better  to  be  "  subdued"  than  instructed  ;  or  whether 
human  nature  would  suffer  a  great  loss  in  losing  wonder, 
if  love  and  admiration  remained  ;  for  admiration,  pace 
tantorum  virorwn,  is  a  different  thing  from  wonder,  and 
is  often  at  its  greatest  height  when  the  strangeness, 
which  is  a  necessary  condition  of  wonder,  has  died  away. 
But  I  do  wonder  at  the  barrenness  of  imagination  of  a 
man  who  can  see  nothing  wonderful  in  the  material  uni- 
verse, since  Newton,  in  an  evil  hour,  partially  unravelled 
a  limited  portion  of  it.  If  ignorance  is  with  him  a  neces- 
sary condition  of  wonder,  can  he  find  nothing  to  wonder 
at  in  the  origin  of  the  system  of  which  Newton  discovered 
the  laws?  nothing  in  the  probable  former  extension  of 
the  solar  substance  beyond  the  orbit  of  Neptune  ?  nothing 
*  F.  H.  Jacobi.    The  entire  passage  is  in  Discussions,  p.  312. 


ON   THE    STUDY    OP   MATHEMATICS.  631 

in  the  starry  heavens,  whicli,  with  a  full  knowledge  of 
what  Newton  taught,  Kant,  in  the  famous  passage  which 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  so  fond  of  quoting  (and  quotes  in 
this  very  lecture),  placed  on  the  same  level  of  sublimity 
with  the  moral  law  ?  If  ignorance  is  the  cause  of 
wonder,  it  is  downright  impossible  that  scientific-  ex- 
planation can  ever  take  it  away,  since  all  which  explana- 
tion does,  in  the  final  resort,  is  to  refer  us  back  to  a 
prior  inexplicable.  Were  the  catastrophe  to  arrive  which 
is  to  expel  Wonder  from  the  universe — were  it  con- 
clusively shown  that  the  mental  operations  are  depen- 
dent upon  organic  agency — would  wonder  be  at  an  end 
because  the  fact,  at  which  we  should  then  have  to  wonder, 
would  be  that  an  arrangement  of  material  particles 
could  produce  thought  and  feeling?  Jacobi  and  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  might  have  put  their  minds  at  ease.  It  is  not 
understanding  that  destroys  wonder,  it  is  familiarity. 
To  a  person  whose  feelings  have  depth  enough  to  with- 
stand that,  no  insight  which  can  ever  be  attained  into 
natural  phs&nomena  will  make  Nature  less  wonderFul. 
And  as  for  those  whose  sensibilities  are  shallow,  did 
Jacobi  suppose  that  they  wondered  one  iota  the  more  at 
the  planetary  motions,  when  astronomers  imagined  them 
to  take  place  by  the  complicated  evolutions  of  "  cycle  on 
epicycle,  orb  on  orb?"  A  spectacle  which  they  saw 
every  day,  had,  we  may  rely  upon  it,  as  little  eflTect  in 
kindling  their  imaginations  then,  as  now.  Hear  the 
opinion  of  a  great  poet:*  not  speaking  particularly  of 
wonder,  but  of  the  emotions  generally  which  the  spec- 
tacle of  nature  excites,  and  in  words  which  apply  to  that 
emotion  equally  with  the  rest. 

"  Some  are  of  opinion  that  the  habit  of  analysing,  de- 
*'  composing,  and  anatomising,  is  inevitably  unfavourable 
"  to  the  perception  of  beauty.  People  are  led  into  this 
"  mistake  by  overlooking  the  fact  that  such  processes 
"  being  to  a  certain  extent  within  the  reach  of  a  limited 
"  intellect,  we  are  apt  to  ascribe  to  them  that  insensibility 
"  of  which  they  are,  in  truth,  the  effect,  and  not  the  cause. 

*  Wordsworth,  in  the  Biography  by  his  nephew,  iL  159. 


632  SIR    WILLIAM    HAMILTON   ON   MATHEMATICS. 

"  Admiration  and  love,  to  which  all  knowledge  truly  vital 
"  must  tend,  are  felt  by  men  of  real  genius  in  proportion 
"  as  their  discoveries  in  natural  philosophy  are  enlarged  ; 
*'  and  the  beauty,  in  form,  of  a  plant  or  an  animal,  is  not 
"  made  less  but  more  apparent,  as  a  whole,  by  more  accu- 
"  rate  insight  into  its  constituent  properties  and  powers." 

Hear  next  one  of  the  most  illustrious  discoverers  in 
physical  science.  Instead  of  regarding  understanding 
a*?  antithetical  to  wonder,  Dr.  Faraday  complains  that 
people  do  not  wonder  sufficiently  at  the  material  uni- 
verse, because  they  do  not  sufficiently  understand  it. 

"  Let  us  now  consider,  for  a  little  while,  how  wonder- 
"  fully  we  stand  upon  this  world.  Here  it  is  we  are 
"  born,  bred,  and  live,  and  yet  we  view  these  things  with 
"  an  almost  entire  absence  of  wonder  to  ourselves  re- 
"  specting  the  way  in  which  all  this  happens.  So  small, 
"  indeed,  is  our  wonder,  that  we  are  never  taken  by  sur- 
"  prise  ;  and  I  do  think  that,  to  a  young  person  of  ten, 
"  fifteen,  or  twenty  years  of  age,  perhaps  the  first  sight 
"  of  a  cataract  or  a  mountain  would  occasion  him  more 
"  surprise  tlian  he  had  ever  felt  concerning  the  means  of 
"  his  own  existence  ;  how  he  came  here ;  how  he  lives ; 
"  by  what  means  he  stands  upright ;  and  through  what 
"  means  he  moves  about  from  place  to  place.  Hence, 
"  we  come  into  this  world,  we  live,  and  depart  from  it, 
"  without  our  thoughts  being  called  specifically  to  con- 
"  sider  how  all  this  takes  place  ;  and  were  it  not  for  the 
"  exertions  of  some  few  inquiring  minds  who  have  looked 
"  into  these  things,  and  ascertained  the  very  beautiful 
"  laws  and  conditions  by  which  we  do  live  and  stand 
"  upon  the  earth,  we  should  hardly  be  aware  that  there 
"  was  anything  wonderful  in  it."* 

If  any  additional  authority  be  desired,  the  greatest  poet 
of  modern  Germany  was  also  the  keenest  scientific  na- 
turalist in  it. 

*  Lectures  on  the  Forces  of  Matter,  pp.  2, 3.  The  philosophy  of  this  i& 
well  given  by  Mr.  Lewes  in  his  valuable  work  on  Aristotle  (p.  212). 
"  Surprise    starts   fi'om   a  background   of    knowledge,   or    fixed    belief. 

I  "  Nothing  is  surprising  to  ignorance,  because  the  mind  in  that  state  has 

I    'no  preconceptions  to  be  contradicted."  \ 


633 


CHAPTER  XXVIIT. 


CONCLUDING      REMARKS. 

In  the  examination  which  I  have  now  concluded  of  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  philosophical  achievements,  I  have  un- 
avoidably laid  stress  on  points  of  difference  from  him 
rather  than  on  those  of  agreement ;  the  reason  being, 
that  I  differ  from  almost  everything  in  his  philosophy 
on  which  he  particularly  valued  himself,  or  which  is  spe- 
cially his  own.  His  merits,  which,  though  I  do  not 
rate  them  so  high,  I  feel  and  admire  as  sincerely  as  his 
most  enthusiastic  disciples,  are  rather  diffused  through 
his  speculations  generally,  than  concentrated  on  any 
particular  point.  They  chiefly  consist  in  his  clear  and 
distinct  mode  of  bringing  before  the  reader  many  of 
the  fundamental  questions  of  metaphysics ;  some  good 
specimens  of  psychological  analysis  on  a  small  scale ; 
and  the  many  detached  logical  and  psychological  truths 
which  he  has  separately  seized,  and  which  are  scattered 
through  his  writings,  mostly  applied  to  resolve  some 
special  difficulty  and  again  lost  sight  of  I  can  hardly 
point  to  anything  he  has  done  towards  helping  the  more 
thorough  understanding  of  the  greater  mental  phaeno- 
mena,  unless  it  be  his  theory  of  Attention  (including 
Abstraction),  which  seems  to  me  the  most  perfect  we 
have.*     The  facts  and  speculations  on  Sleep  and  Dream- 

*  Even  on  this  subject  he  has  not  been  able  to  avoid  some  fallacies  in 
reasoning.  Thus,  in  maintaining  agaiubt  Stewart  and  Brown  that  we  can 
attend  to  more  than  one  object  at  once,  he  defends  this  true  doctrine  by 
some  very  bad  arguments.  He  says,  (Lectures,  i.  25'2,)  that  if  the  mind 
could  "  attend  to,  or  be  conscious  of,  only  a  smgle  object  at  a  time,"  the 
conclusion  would  be  involved,  "that  all  comparison  and  discrimination  are 
impossible."  This  assumes  that  we  cannot  compare  and  discriminate  any 
impressions  but  those  which  are  exactly  simultaneous.    May  not  the  cou- 


63'4  CONCLUDING   REMARKS. 

ing  in  his  Seventeenth  Lecture  on  Metaphysics,  have 
been  credited  to  him  as  an  acquisition  to  philosophy, 
and  are  a  good  specimen  of"  inductive  enquiry ;  but  their 
principal  merit,  both  in  point  of  observation  and  of 
thought,  is  avowedly  Jouffroy's.* 

ditlon  of  discrimination  be  consciousness  not  at  the  same,  but  at  imme- 
diately successive  instants  ?  May  not  discrimination  depend  on  change 
of  consciousness;  the  transition  from  one  state  to  another?  This  is  a 
tenable  opinion ;  it  was  actually  maintained  by  the  philosophers  against 
whom  our  author  was  arguing ;  and  if  he  thought  it  erroneous,  he  should 
have  disproved  it.  Unless  he  did,  he  was  not  entitled  to  treat  a  doctrine 
shown  to  involve  this  consequence,  as  reduced  to  absurdity.  Another  of 
his  proofs  of  our  ability  to  attend  to  a  plurality  of  things  at  once,  is  our 
perception  of  harmony  between  sounds.  He  argues  (Lectures,  i.  244)  that 
to  perceive  a  relation  between  two  sounds  implies  a  compai'ison,  and  that 
if  this  comparison  is  not  between  the  sounds  themselves,  simultaneously 
attended  to,  it  must  be  a  comjjarison  of  ''past  sound  as  retained  in  memory, 
with  the  present  as  actually  perceived  ;"  which  still  implies  attending  to 
two  objects  at  once.  His  opponents  however  might  say,  that  if  there  be  a 
comparison,  it  is  not  between  two  simultaneous  impressions,  either  sensa- 
tions or  memories,  but  between  two  successive  sounds  in  the  instant  of 
transition.  They  might  add,  that  the  perception  of  harmony  does  not 
necessarily  involve  comparison.  When  a  number  of  sounds  in  perfect 
harmony  strike  the  ear  simultaneously,  we  have  but  a  single  impression  ; 
we  perceive  but  one  mass  of  sound.  Analysing  this  into  its  component 
parts  is  an  act  of  intelligence,  not  of  direct  perception,  and  is  performed 
by  fixing  our  attention  first  on  the  whole,  and  then  on  the  separate  ele- 
ments, not  all  at  once,  but  one  after  another.  These  objections  to  his 
doctrine  our  author  seems  not  to  have  thought  of,  because  those  of  Stewart, 
whom  as  an  opponent  he  principally  had  in  view,  were  dififerent  ( Lectures, 
ii.  145).  But  they  ought  to  have  occurred  to  him  without  prompting, 
being  in  complete  unison  with  his  doctrine  that  consciousness  of  wholes 
usually  precedes  that  of  their  parts  ;  that  "  instead  of  commencing  with 
minima,  perception  commences  with  masses."  (Lectures,  ii.  327,  and  many 
similar  passages.) 

Sir  W.  Hamilton  is  also  inconsistent  in  affirming  (Lectures,  i.  237)  that 
attention  is  "  an  act  of  will  or  desire,"  and  afterwards  (247,  248)  that  it  i.s 
in  some  cases  automatic,  "  a  mere  vital  and  irresistible  act."  This  how- 
ever, is  only  a  verbal  inaccuracy.  He  doubtless  meant  that  attention  is 
generally  voluntary,  but  occasionally  automatic. 

*  I  see  with  regret  that  what  I  have  said  above,  or  rather  perhaps  what 
I  have  omitted  to  say,  has  given  an  impression  even  to  friendly  critics 
that  I  think  considerably  less  highly  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  intellectual 
calibre,  and  of  his  general  services  to  mankind,  than  I  do.  My  business 
in  this  work  was  to  estimate  not  the  man,  but  the  permanent  additions 
made  by  him  to  the  sum  of  speculative  philosophy.  These  I  cannot  rate 
very  high,  but  I  join  sincerely  and  heartdy  in  the  tribute  to  his  merits,  so 
justly  paid  by  Mr.  Grote  in  the  "Westminster  Review  (pp.  2,  3). 

"  He  kept  up  the  idea  of  philosophy  as  a  subject  to  be  studied  from  its 
"  own  points  of  view :  a  dignity  which  in  earlier  times  it  enjoyed,  perhaps 
"to  mischievous  excess,  but  from  which  in  recent  times  it  has  far  too  much 
"  receded,  especially  in   England.     He  performed  the  great  service  of 


CONCLUDING    REMARKS.  635 

With  regard  to  the  causes  which  prevented  a  thinker 
of  such  abundant  acuteness,  and  more  than  abundant 
industry,  from  accomplishing  the  great  things  at  which 
he  aimed,  it  would  ill  become  me  to  speak  dogmatically. 
It  would  be  a  very  unwarrantable  assumption  of  superio- 
rity over  a  mind  like  Sir  W.  Hamilton's,  if  I  attempted 

"  labonring  strenuously  to  piece  together  the  past  traditions  of  philosophy, 
"  to  rediscover  those  which  had  been  allowed  to  drop  into  oblivion,  and  to 
"  make  out  the  genealogy  of  opinions  as  far  as  negligent  predecessors  had 
"  still  left  the  possibility  of  doing  so.  We  recognise  also  in  Sir  VV.  Hamil- 
"  ton  an  amount  of  intellectual  independence  which  seldom  accompanies 
"  such  vast  erudition.  He  recites  many  different  opinions,  but  he  judges 
"  them  all  for  himself;  and,  what  is  of  still  greater  moment,  he  constantly 
"  gives  the  reasons  for  his  judgments.     To  us  these  reasons  are  alway^s  of 

"  more  or  less  value,  whether  we  admit  them  to  be  valid  or  not 

"  To  those  who  dissent  from  him,  as  well  as  to  those  who  agree  with  him, 
"  his  reasonings  are  highly  instructive  :  while  the  full  citations  from  so 
"  many  other  writers  contribute  materially  not  only  to  elucidate  the 
"  points  directly  approached,  but  also  to  enlarge  our  knowledge  of  philo- 
"  sophy  generally." 

And  in  the  emphatic  words  of  Professor  Masson  (pp.  308,  309) :  "  Try 
"  him  even  in  respect  of  the  importance  of  his  effects  on  the  national 
"  thought.  Whether  from  his  learning  or  by  reason  of  his  independent 
"  thinkings,  was  it  not  he  that  hurled  into  the  midst  of  us  the  verj'  ques- 
"  tions  of  metaphysics,  and  the  very  forms  of  those  questions,  that  have 
"  become  the  academic  theses  everywhere  in  this  British  age  for  real 
"  metaphysical  discussion?  ....  Let  it  be  said  of  Sir  W.  H amilton  that, 
"  simply  and  by  whatever  means,  he  did  more  than  any  other  man  to  re- 
"  instate  the  worship  of  Difficulty  in  the  higher  mind  of  Great  Britain." 

Moreover,  as  Mr.  Grote  further  observes,  "  in  a  subject  so  abstract,  ob- 
"  scure,  and  generally  unpalatable,  as  Logic  and  Metaphysics,  the  difficulty 
"  which  the  teacher  finds  in  inspiring  interest  is  extreme.  That  Sir  \V . 
"  Hamilton  overcame  such  difficulty  with  remarkable  success  is  the  affir- 
"  mation  of  his  two  editors,"  and  is  proved  by  the  profound  impression 
left  by  the  teacher  and  his  teaching  on  the  intellects  and  feelings  of  his 
pupils.  The  "Inquirer"  (p.  6)  charges  me  with  ignoring  "that  which 
'•  formed  the  greater  part  of  his  work — the  living  teaching  he  gave  to  living 
"  men — whereby  he  has  raised  up  for  our  age  and  nation  that  which  we 
"  most  needed,  a  school  of  men  who  can  and  do  think."  It  would  be  very 
unworthy  to  ignore  so  important  an  item  in  his  services  to  mankind.  I 
acknowledge  it  with  a  feeling,  in  which  I  am  surpassed  by  none,  of  the 
inestimable  worth  of  all  such  services.  But  if  I  had  been  attempting  a 
summary  of  the  benefits  which  the  world  owes  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  neither 
could  Ihave  ignored  his  articles  on  Education,  and  especially  those  on  the 
English  Universities,  to  which  it  is  impossible  not  to  attribute  a  great  in- 
fluence in  shaming  those  bodies  out  of  their  long-continued  selfish  betrayal 
of  their  national  trust,  and  putting  the  new  life  into  them  which  they 
have  since  manifested  and  are  manifesting,  with  so  much  advantage  to 
the  spirit  of  the  time  and  to  the  national  culture. 

Even  in  the  character  of  a  speculative  thinker,  my  estimate  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  is  prodigiously  misjudged  by  those  who  have  made  themselves. 


636  CONCLUDING    REMARKS. 

to  gauge  and  measure  his  faculties,  or  give  a  complete 
theory  of  his  successes  and  failures.  The  utmost  I  venture 
on,  is  to  suggest,  as  simple  possibilities,  some  of  the  causes 
which  may  have  partly  contributed  to  his  shortcomings 
as  a  philosopher.  One  of  those  causes  is  so  common  as 
to  be  the  next  thing  to  universal,  but  requires  all  the 
more  to  be  signalized  for  its  unfortunate  consequences : 

as  they  had  good  right  to  do,  the  champions  of  his  philosophic  reputation. 
I  cannot  sufficiently  protest  against  such  assertions  as  that  of  Mr.  Mansel 
(p.  181),  to  which  there  are  several  equivalent  by  the  "  Inquirer,"  that,  if 
all  is  true  which  I  have  alleged,  "  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  instead  of  being  a 
"  great  philosopher,  is  the  veriest  blunderer  that  ever  put  pen  to  paper." 
Siich  exaggerations  are  intelligible  in  those  by  whose  own  estimate  he 
stands  almost  at  the  summit  of  existing  philosophy,  and  who  having 
climbed,  as  they  think,  by  his  assistance,  to  the  same  pinnacle,  think  an 
inferior  eminence  unworthy  to  be  counted  for  anything  at  all.  But  some 
of  the  most  conspicuous  figures  in  the  history  of  philosophy,  distinguished 
no  less  by  the  power  of  their  intellect  than  by  the  greatness  of  their 
influence  on  subsequent  thought,  have  not,  at  least  in  my  judgment,  left 
behind  them  even  so  much  of  positive  addition  to  philosophic  truth  as  Sir 
W.  Hamilton.  Kant,  for  example,  of  whose  mental  powers  no  one  who  is 
not  a  disciple  probably  forms  a  higher  estimate  than  I  do,  and  who  holds 
so  essential  a  place  in  the  development  of  philosophic  thought,  that  until 
somebody  had  done  what  Kant  did,  metaphysics  according  to  our  present 
conception  of  it  could  not  have  been  constituted — Kant,  probably,  will  be 
finally  judged  to  have  left  no  noticeable  contribution  to  philosophy  which 
was  both  new  and  true,  except  some  of  his  refutations  of  predecessors. 
Kant,  it  is  true,  was  a  more  consecutive,  and  therefore  a  more  consistent 
thinker  than  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  and  it  is  chiefly  by  that  quality  that  he  has 
become  one  of  the  turning  points  in  the  history  of  philosophy,  which  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  has  no  claim  to  be :  but  in  ability  to  discern  psychological 
truths  uncoloured  by  a  theory,  he  seems  to  me  inferior  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton. 
Perhaps,  though  of  a  very  different  character  of  mind,  the  nearest  parallel 
in  philosophic  merit  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton  (apart  from  erudition,  in  which 
he  has  probably  no  parallel  among  philosophers),  was  Professor  Dugald 
Stewart.  Neither  of  them  can  be  numbered  among  the  great  original 
thinkers  who  have  carried  philosophy  into  one  of  its  indispensable  phases, 
as  did  Locke,  Descartes,  Hume,  Kant,  and  with  all  his  shortcomings,  even 
Reid.  Neither  of  them  saw  into  the  heart  of  great  psychological  ques- 
tions which  had  never  been  fatit  omed  before,  like  Berkeley,  Hartley, 
Brown,  or  James  Mill.  Both  of  them  have  thrown  considerable  light  on 
minor  questions  :  both  have  gathered,  and  more  or  less  perfectly  assimi- 
lated, truths  from  very  opposite  quarters :  both  have  committed  great 
oversights,  though  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  coming  last,  and  having  the  benefit 
of  the  Kantian  movement,  stood  on  a  considerably  higher  platform  of 
metaphysical  thought.  Both  had  some,  though  but  moderate,  powers  of 
analysis  ;  their  philosophic  style,  though  extremely  unlike,  was,  in  both,  ex- 
cellent :  both  gave  animj^ortant  stimulus  to  the  national  intellect  by  their 
extraordinary  power  as  public  teachers  ;  and  both  will  be  remembered  as 
meritoriously  handing  on  the  torch  of  philosophy,  but  neither  of  them,  I 
venture  to  say,  as  among  those  who  have  much  brightened  or  fed  its  flame. 


CONCLUDING    REMARKS.  637 

over-anxiety  to  make  safe  a  foregone  conclusion.  The  | 
whole  philosophy  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  seems  to  have  had  | 
its  character  determined  by  the  requirements  of  the  doc- 
trine of  Free-will ;  and  to  that  doctrine  he  clung,  be- 
cause he  had  persuaded  himself  that  it  afforded  the  only 
premises  from  which  human  reason  could  deduce  the 
doctrines  of  natural  religion.  I  believe  that  in  this 
persuasion  he  was  thoroughly  his  own  dupe,  and 
that  his  speculations  have  weakened  the  philosophical 
foundation  of  religion  fully  as  much  as  they  have  con- 
firmed it. 

A  second  cause  which  may  help  to  account  for  his  not 
having  effected  more  in  philosophy,  is  the  enormous 
amount  of  time  and  mental  vigour  which  he  expended  on 
mere  philosophical  erudition,  leaving,  it  may  be  said,  only 
the  remains  of  his  mind  for  the  real  business  of  thinking. 
While  he  seems  to  have  known,  almost  by  heart,  the 
voluminous  Greek  coinmentators  on  Aristotle,  and  to 
have  read  all  that  the  most  obscure  schoolman  or  fifth- 
rate  German  transcendentalist  had  written  on  the  sub- 
jects with  which  he  occupied  himself;  while,  not  con- 
tent with  a  general  knowledge  of  these  authors,  he  could 
tell  with  the  greatest  precision  what  each  of  them 
thought  on  any  given  topic,  and  in  what  each  differed 
from  every  other;  while  expending  his  time  and  energy 
on  all  this,  he  had  not  enough  of  them  left  to  complete 
his  Lectures.  Those  on  Metaphysics,  as  already  remarked, 
stopped  short  on  the  threshold  of  what  was,  especially  in 
his  own  opinion,  the  most  important  part  of  it,  and  never 
reached  even  the  threshold  of  the  third  and  last  of  the 
parts  into  which,  in  an  early  lecture,  he  divided 
his  subject.*  Those  on  Logic  he  left  dependent,  for 
most  of  the  subordinate  developments,  on  extracts  strung 
together  from  German  writers,  chieHy  Krug  and  Esser  ; 
often  not  destitute  of  merit,   but  generally  so  vague,  as 

*  Lectures,  i.  123-126.    This  third  part  is  "  Ontology,  or  Metaphysics 
Proper;"  "the  science  conversant  about  inferences  of  unknown  being  from 
its  known  manifestations;"  things  not  manifested  in  consciousness,  but  , 
legitimately  inferrible  from  those  which  are. 


638  CONCLUDING    REMARKS. 

to  make  all  those  parts  of  his  exposition  in  which  they 
predominate,  unsatisfactory  ■*  sometimes  written  from 
points  of  view  different  from  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  own, 
but  which  he  never  found  time  or  took  the  trouble  to 
re-express  in  adaptation  to  his  own  mode  of  thought, f 
In  the  whole  circle  of  psychological  and  logical  specula- 
tion, it  is  astonishing  how  few  are  the  topics  into  which  he 
has  thrown  any  of  the  powers  of  his  own  intellect ;  and 
on  how  small  a  proportion  even  of  these  he  has  pushed 
his  investigations  beyond  what  seemed  necessary  for  the 
purposes  of  some  particular  controversy.  In  consequence, 
philosophical  doctrines  are  taken  up,  and  again  laid 
down,  with  perfect  unconsciousness,  and  his  philosophy 
seems  made  up  of  scraps  from  several  conflicting  meta- 
physical systems.  The  Belativity  of  human  knowledge 
is  made  a  great  deal  of  in  opposition  to  Schelling  and 
Cousin,  but  drops  out  or  dwindles  into  nothing  in  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  own  psychology.  The  validity  of  our 
natural  beliefs,  and  the  doctrine  that  the  incogitable  is 
not  therefore  impossible,  are  strenuously  asserted  in  this 
place  and  disregarded  in  that,  according  to  the  question 
in  hand.  On  the  subject  of  General  Notions  he  is 
avowedly  a  Nominalist,  but  teaches  the  whole  of  Logic 
as  if  he  had  never  heard  of  any  doctrine  but  the  Con- 
ceptualist ;  what  he  presents  as  a  reconcilement  of  the 
two  being  never  adverted  to  afterwards,  and  serving 
only  as  an  excuse  to  himself  for  accepting  the  one 
doctrine  and  invariably  using  the  language  of  the  other. 
Arriving   at    his    doctrines    almost    always   under   the 

*  This  is  strikinglj^  tlie  case,  among  many  others,  with  the  Lectures  on 
Definition  and  Division.  On  those  subjects  our  author  lets  Krug  and 
Esser  think  for  him.  Those  authors  stand  to  him  instead,  not  merely  of 
lindinsr  a  fit  expression  for  his  thoughts,  but  apparently  of  having  any 
thoughts  at  all. 

t  I  have  already  given  an  example  of  this  from  the  Lectures,  iii.  159- 
162.  His  own  idea  of  Clearness  as  a  property  of  concepts,  is  that  "a  con- 
'■  cept  is  said  to  be  clear  when  the  degree  of  consciousness  is  such  as  to 
"  enable  us  to  distinguish  it"  (the  concept)  "  as  a  whole  from  others  :" 
but  this  idea  is  expounded  by  a  passage  from  Esser,  in  which  it  is  not  the 
concept,  but  the  objects  thought  throrgh  the  concept,  which,  if  sufficiently 
distinguished  from  all  others,  constitute  the  concept  a  clear  one.  I 
confess  that  Esser  has  here  greatly  the  advantage  over  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
who  might  have  usefully  corrected  his  own  theory  from  the  borrowed 
commentary  on  it. 


CONCLUDING    REMARKS.  639 

stimulus  of  some  special  dispute,  he  never  knows  how- 
far  to  press  them  :  consequently  there  is  a  region 
of  haze  round  the  place  where  opinions  of  different 
origin  meet.  I  formerly  quoted  from  him  a  felicitous 
illustration  drawn  from  the  mechanical  operation  of 
tunnelling ;  that  process  affords  another,  justly  applicable 
to  himself.  The  reader  must  have  heard  of  that  gigantic 
enterprise  of  the  Italian  Grovernment,  the  tunnel  through 
Mont  Cenis.  This  great  work  is  carried  on  simultane- 
ously from  both  ends,  in  well-grounded  confidence  (such 
is  now  the  minute  accuracy  of  engineering  operations) 
that  the  two  parties  of  workmen  will  correctly  meet  in 
the  middle.  Were  they  to  disappoint  this  expectation, 
and  work  past  one  another  in  the  dark,  they  would  afford 
a  likeness  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  mode  of  tunnelling  the 
human  mind. 

This  failure  to  think  out  subjects  until  they  had  been 
thoroughly  mastered,  or  until  consistency  had  been  at- 
tained between  the  different  views  which  the  author  took 
of  them  from  different  points  of  observation,  may,  like 
the  unfinished  state  of  the  Lectures,  be  with  great  pro- 
bability ascribed  to  the  excessive  absorption  of  his  time 
and  energies  by  the  study  of  old  writers.  That  absorp- 
tion did  worse  ;  for  it  left  him  with  neither  leisure  nor 
vigour  for  what  was  far  mofe  important  in  every  sense, 
and  an  entirely  indispensable  qualification  for  a  master 
in  philosophy — the  systematic  study  of  the  sciences. 
Except  physiology,  on  some  parts  of  which  his  mental 
powers  were  really  employed,  he  may  be  said  to  have 
known  nothing  of  any  physical  science.  I  do  not  mean 
that  he  was  ignorant  of  familiar  facts,  or  that  he  may 
not,  in  the  course  of  his  education,  have  gone  through 
the  curriculum.  But  it  must  have  been  as  Gibbon  did, 
who  says,  in  his  autobiography,  "  I  was  content  to  receive 
"  the  passive  impressions  of  my  professor's  lectures,  with- 
"  out  any  active  exercise  of  my  own  powers."  For  any 
trace  the  study  had  left  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  mind,  he 
might  as  well  never  have  heard  of  it.*    , 

*  The  signs  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  want  of  familiarity  with  the  physical 
sciences  meet  us  in  every  corner  of  his  works.    One,  which  I  have  not 


640  CONCLUDING   REMARKS. 

It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  did 
not  write  the  history  of  philosophy,  instead  oF  choosing, 
as  the  direct  object  of  his  intellectual  exertions,  philo- 
sophy itself.  He  possessed  a  knowledge  of  the  materials 
such  as  no  one,  probably,  for  many  generations,  will  take 
the  trouble  of  acquiring  again  ;  and  the  erudition  of  phi- 
losophy is  emphatically  one  of  the  things  which  it  is 
good  that  a  few  should  acquire  for  the  benefit  of  the 
rest.  Independently  of  the  great  interest  and  value 
attaching  to  a  knowledge  of  the  historical  develop- 
ment of  speculation,  there  is  much  in  the  old  writers  on 
philosophy,  even  those  of  the  middle  ages,  really  worth 
preserving  for  its  scientific  value.*     But  this  should  be 

hitherto  found  a  convenient  place  for  noticing,  is  the  singular  view  he 
takes  of  analysis  and  synthesis.  He  imagines  that  synthesis  always  pre- 
supposes analysis,  and  that  unless  grounded  on  a  previous  analysis,  syn- 
thesis can  afford  no  knowledge.  "  Synthesis  without  a  previous  analysis 
"  is  baseless ;  for  synthesis  receives  from  analysis  the  elements  which  it 
"  recomposes"  (Lectures,  i.  98).  "  Synthesis  without  analysis  is  a  false 
"  knowledge,  that  is,  no  knowledge  at  all.  ...  A  synthesis  without  a 
"  previous  analysis  is  radically  and  ab  initio  null"  (Ibid.  99).  This 
affirmation  is  the  more  surprising,  as  the  example  he  himself  selects  to 
illustrate  analysis  and  synthesis  is  a  case  of  chemical  composition ;  a 
neutral  salt,  compounded  of  an  acid  and  an  alkali.  Did  he  suppose  that 
when  a  chemist  succeeds  in  forming  a  salt  by  synthesis  merely,  putting 
together  two  substances  never  actually  found  in  combination,  he  does  not 
make  exactly  the  same  addition  to  chemical  science  as  if  he  had  met  with 
the  compound  first,  and  analysed  it  into  its  elements  afterwards  ?  Did 
Sir  W.  Hamilton  ever  read  a  memoir  by  a  chemist  on  a  newly-discovered 
elementary  substance?  If  so,  did  he  not  find  that  the  discoverer  invari- 
ably proceeds  to  ascertain  by  synthesis  what  combiuations  the  new  element 
will  form  with  all  other  elements  for  which  it  has  any  affinity  ?  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  though  he  drew  his  example  from  physics,  forgot  all  that 
related  to  the  example,  and  thought  only  of  psychological  investigation, 
in  which  it  does  commonly  happen  that  the  compound  fact  is  presented 
to  us  first,  and  we  have  to  begin  by  analysing  it;  our  synthesis,  if  prac- 
ticable at  all,  taking  place  afterwards,  and  serving  only  to  verify  the 
analysis.  Therefore,  in  spite  of  his  own  example.  Sir  W.  Hamilton 
defines  synthesis  as  being  always  a  recomposition  and  "  reconstruction" 
(Lectures,  i.  98).  Could  any  one  who  had  the  smallest  familiarity  with 
physical  science  have  committed  this  strange  oversight? 

Another  example,  to  which  I  shall  content  myself  with  referring,  is 
the  incapacity  of  understanding  an  argument  respecting  a  principle  of 
Mechanics,  shown  in  his  controversy  with  Dr.  Whewell  respecting  the 
law  that  the  pressure  of  a  lever  on  the  fulcrum,  when  the  weights 
balance  one  another,  is  equal  to  the  sum  of  the  two  weights  (Discussions, 
pp.  338,  33c>). 

*  "  We  set  particular  value  upon  this  preservation  of  the  traditions  of 
"  philosophy,  and  upon  this  maintenance  of  a  known  perpetual  succes- 


CONCLUDING    REMARKS.  641 

extracted,  and  rendered  into  the  phraseology  of  modern 
thought,  by  persons  as  familiar  with  that  as  with  the 
ancient,  and  possessing  a  command  of  its  language ;  a 
combination  never  yet  so  perfectly  realized  as  in  Sir  W. 
Hamilton.  It  is  waste  of  time  for  a  mere  student  of 
philosophy,  to  have  to  learn  the  familiar  use  of  fifby 
philosophic  phraseologies,  all  greatly  inferior  to  that  of 
his  own  time;  and  if  this  were  required  from  all  thinkers, 
there  would  be  very  little  time  left  for  thought.  A  man 
who  had  done  it  so  thoroughly  as  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
should  have  made  his  cotemporaries  and  successors,  once 
for  all,  partakers  of  the  benefit ;  and  rendered  it  unneces- 
sary for  any  one  to  do  it  again,  except  for  verifying  and 
correcting  his  representations.  This,  which  no  one  but 
himself  could  have  done,  he  has  left  undone;  and  has 
given  us,  instead,  a  contribution  to  mental  philosophy 
which  has  been  more  than  equalled  by  many  not  superior 
to  him  in  powers,  and  wholly  destitute  of  erudition.  Of 
all  persons,  in  modern  times,  entitled  to  the  name  of  phi- 
losophers, the  two,  probably,  whose  reading  on  their  own 
subjects  was  the  scantiest,  in  proportion  to  their  intel- 
lectual capacity,  were  Dr.  Thomas  Brown  and  Arch- 
bishop Whately  :  accordingly  they  are  the  only  two  of 
whom  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  though  acknowledging  their 
abilities,  habitually  speaks  with  a  certain  tinge  of  super- 
ciliousness. It  cannot  be  denied  that  both  Dr.  Brown 
and  Archbishop  Whately  would  have  thought  and  written 
better  than  they  did,  if  they  had  been  better  read  in  the 
writings  of  previous  thinkers:  but  I  am  not  afraid  that  pos- 

"  sion  among  the  speculative  minds  of  humanity,  with  proper  comparisons 
"  and  contrasts.  We  have  found  among  the  names  quoted  by  Sir  W. 
"  Hamilton,  and  thanks  to  his  care,  several  authors  hardly  at  all  known 
"  to  us,  and  opinions  cited  from  them  not  less  instructive  than  curious. 
"  He  deserves  the  more  gratitude,  because  he  departs  herein  from  received 
"  usage  since  Bacon  and  Descartes.  The  example  set  by  these  great  men 
"  was  admirable,  so  far  as  it  went  to  throw  off  the  authority  of  prede- 
"  cessors  ;  but  pernicious  so  far  as  it  banished  those  predecessors  out  of 
"  knowledge,  like  mere  magazines  of  immaturity  and  error.  Throughout 
"  the  eighteenth  century,  all  study  of  the  earlier  modes  of  philosophizing 
"  was,  for  the  most  part,  neglected.  Of  such  neglect,  remarkable  in- 
"  stances  are  pointed  out  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton." — Mr.  Grote,  in  Weet- 
minster  Review,  p.  2. 

TT 


642  CONCLUDING    REMARKS. 

terity  will  contradict  me  when  I  say,  that  either  of  them 
has  done  greater  service  to  the  world,  in  the  origination 
and  diffusion  of  important  thought,  tlian  Sir  W.Hamilton 
with  all  his  learning :  because,  though  indolent  readers, 
they  were,  both  of  them,  active  and  fertile  thinkers.* 

It  is  not  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  erudition  is  not 
frequently  of  real  use  to  him  on  particular  questions  of 
philosophy.  It  does  him  one  valuable  service :  it  eh- 
ables  him  to  know  all  the  various  opinions  which  can  be 
held  on  the  questions  he  discusses,  and  to  conceive  and 
express  them  clearly,  leaving  none  of  them  out.  This  it 
does,  though  even  this  not  always  ;  but  it  does  little 
else,  even  of  what  might  be  expected  from  erudition 
when  enlightened  by  philosophy.  He  knew,  with  ex- 
traordinary accuracy,  the  on  of  every  philosopher' s"doc- 
trine,  but  gave  himself  little  trouble  about  the  ^lon. 
With  one  exception,  I  find  no  remarks  bearing  upon 
that  point  in  any  part  of  his  writings.!     I  imagine  he 

*  Mr.  Grote,  agreeing  with  me  as  to  Brown,  demurs  to  this  judgment  as 
regards  Archbishop  Whately ;  of  which  latter  comparison  Professor  Mas- 
son,  still  more  naturally,  complains.  Our  difference,  I  suspect,  is  not 
that  I  value  Sir  W.  Hamilton  less,  but  Archbishop  Whately  more.  The 
result  of  my  reading  of  many  of  his  multifarious  writings  is  a  much  higher 
estimation  than  Mr.  Grote's  seems  to  be,  both  of  his  originality  and  of 
his  services  to  thought.  As  a  metaphysician  proper,  no  one  would  com- 
pare him  with  Sir  W.  Hamilton  :  but  I  am  speaking  of  him  in  the  more 
general  character  of  a  thinker,  and  in  respect  of  the  number  of  true  and 
valuable  thoughts  on  many  various  subjects,  metaphysics  being  one,  which 
he  brought  into  the  general  stock,  and  threw  into  circulation. 

Let  me  add  that  in  speaking  of  Brown  and  Whately  as  active  and  fer- 
tile thinkers,  I  had  no  idea  that  I  should  be  considered  as  refusing  those 
attributes  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton. 

f  This  solitary  exception  relates  to  Hume.  Respectuig  the  general 
scope  and  purpose,  the  pervading  spirit,  of  Hume's  speculations.  Sir  W. 
Hamilton  does  give  an  opinion,  and,  I  venture  to  think,  a  wrong  one.  He 
regards  Hume's  philosopliy  as  scepticism  in  its  legitimate  sense.  Hume's 
object,  he  thinks,  was  to  prove  the  uncertainty  of  all  knowledge.  With 
this  intent  he  represents  him  as  reasoning  from  premises  "  not  established 
by  himself,"  but  "  accepted  only  as  principles  universally  conceded  in  the 
previous  schools  of  philosophy."  These  premises  Hume  showed  (accord- 
mg  to  Sir  W.  Hamilton)  to  lead  to  conclusions  which  contradicted  the 
evidence  of  consciousness  ;  thus  proving,  not  that  consciousness  deceives, 
but  that  the  premises  generally  accepted  on  the  authority  of  philosophers, 
and  leading  to  these  conclusions,  must  be  false.  {Discussions,  pp.  87,  88, 
and  elsewhere.) 

This  is  certainly  the  use  which  has  been  made  of  Hume's  arguments,  by 


CONCLUDING    REMARKS.  643 

would  have  been  much  at  a  loss  if  he  had  been  required 
to  draw  up  a  philosophical  estimate  of  the  mind  of  any 
great  thinker.  He  rarely  seems  to  look  at  any  opinion 
of  a  philosopher  in  connexion  with  the  same  philoso- 
pher's other  opinions.  Accordingly,  he  is  weak  as  to 
the  mutual  relations  of  philosophical  doctrines.  He 
seldom  knows  any  of  the  corollaries  from  a  thinker's 
opinions,  unless  the  thinker  has  himself  drawn  them; 
and  even  then  he  knows  them,  not  as  corollaries,  but  only 
as  opinions.  One  of  the  most  striking  examples  he  affords 
of  this  inability  is  in  the  case  of  Leibnitz ;  and  it  is 
worth  while  to  analyse  this  instance,   because  nothing 

Reid  and  many  other  of  his  opponents.  Admitting  their  validity  as  argu- 
ments, Raid  considered  them,  not  as  proving  Hume's  conclusions,  but  as  a 
redudio  ad  absurdam  of  his  premises.  That  Hume  however  had  any 
foresight  of  their  being  put  to  this  use,  either  for  a  dogmatical  or  a 
purely  sceptical  purpose,  appears  to  me  supremely  improbable.  If  we 
form  our  opinion  by  reading  the  series  of  Hume's  metaphysical  essays 
straight  through,  instead  of  judging  from  a  few  detached  expressions  in  a 
single  essay  (that  "on  the  Academical  or  Sceptical  Philosophy,")  I  think 
our  judgment  will  be  that  Hume  sincerely  accepted  both  the  premises 
and  the  conclusions.  It  would  be  difficult,  no  doubt,  to  prove  this  by  con- 
clusive evidence,  nor  would  1  venture  absolutely  to  affirm  it.  In  the  case 
of  the  freethinking  philosophers  of  the  last  century,  it  is  often  impossible 
to  be  quite  certain  what  their  opinions  really  were  ;  how  far  the  reserva- 
tions they  made,  expressed  real  convictions,  or  were  concessions  to  sup- 
posed necessities  of  position.  Hume,  it  is  certain,  made  such  concessions 
largely  :  insincere  they  can  hardly  be  called,  being  so  evidently  intended 
to  be  ^(ovfifvra,  at  least  (rvvfTo7(ri.  I  have  a  strong  impression  that  Hume's 
scepticism,  or  rather  his  professed  admiration  of  scepticism,  was  a  dis- 
guise of  this  description,  intended  rather  to  avoid  oflPence  than  to  conceal  his 
opinion  ;  that  he  preferred  to  be  called  a  sceptic,  rather  than  by  a  more 
odious  name ;  and  having  to  promulgate  conclusions  which  he  knew  would 
be  regarded  as  contradicting,  on  one  hand  the  evidence  of  common  sense, 
on  the  other  the  doctrines  of  religion,  did  not  like  to  declare  them  as 
positive  convictions,  but  thought  it  more  judicious  to  exhibit  them  as  the 
results  we  might  come  to,  if  we  put  complete  confidence  in  the  trust- 
worthiness of  our  rational  faculty.  I  have  little  doubt  that  he  himself 
did  feel  this  confidence,  and  wished  it  to  be  felt  by  his  readers.  There  is 
certainly  no  trace  of  a  different  feeling  in  his  speculations  on  any  of  the 
other  important  subjects  treated  in  his  works :  and  even  on  this  subject, 
the  general  tenor  of  what  he  wrote  pointing  one  way,  and  only  single 
passages  the  other,  it  is  most  reasonable  to  interpret  the  latter  in  the 
mode  which  wiU  least  contradict  the  expression  of  his  habitual  state  of 
mind  in  the  former. 

I  cannot  but  believe,  therefore,  that  Sir  W.  Hamilton  has  misunder- 
stood the  essential  character  of  Hume's  mind:  but  his  hearty  admira- 
tiou  and  honest  vindication  of  him  as  a  thinker  are  highly  honourable  to 
Sir  W.  Hamilton,  both  as  a  philosopher  and  as  a  man. 


644  CONCLUDING   REMAF.KS. 

can  more  conclusively  show,  bow  little  capable  be  was  of 
entering  into  tlie  spirit  of  a  system  unlike  bis  own. 

If  tbere  ever  was  a  tbinker  wbose  system  of  tbougbt 
could  witbout  difficulty  be  conceived  as  a  conuected 
wbole,  it  was  Leibnitz.  Hardly  any  philosopher  has 
taken  so  much  pains  to  explain  the  filiation  of  all  bis 
main  conceptions,  in  a  manner  at  once  satisfactory  to 
his  own  mind  and  intelligible  to  the  world.  And  there 
is  hardly  any  one  in  whom  the  filiation  is  more  complete, 
these  various  conceptions  being  all  applications  of  one 
common  principle.  Yet  Sir  W.  Hamilton  understands 
them  so  ill,  as  to  be  able  to  say,  after  giving  an  account 
of  the  Pre-established  Harmony,  that  "  its  author  hira- 
"  self  probably  regarded  it  more  as  a  specimen  of  inge- 
"  nuity  than  as  a  serious  doctrine."*  And  again :  "  It 
"  is  a  disputed  point  whether  Leibnitz  was  serious  in 
"  his  monadology  and  pre-established  harmony."!  To 
say  nothing  of  the  injustice  done,  by  this  surmise,  to 
the  deep  sincerity  and  high  philosophic  earnestness  of 
that  most  eminent  man ;  it  is  obvious  to  those  who 
study  opinions  in  their  relation  to  the  mind  entertaining 
them,  that  a  person,  who  could  thus  think  concerning 
the  Pre-established  Harmony  and  tbe  Monadology,  how- 
ever correctly  he  may  have  seized  many  particular  opinions 
of  Leibnitz,  had  never  taken  into  his  mind  a  conception 
of  Leibnitz  himself  as  a  philosopher.  These  theories 
were  necessitated  by  Leibnitz's  other  opinions.  They 
were  the  only  outlet  from  the  difiiculties  of  the  funda- 
mental doctrine  of  his  philosophy,  the  Principle  of 
Sufficient  Reason. 

All  who  know  anything  of  Leibnitz,  are  aware  that 
he  affirmed  it  to  be  a  principle  of  the  universe,  that  no- 
thing exists  which  has  not  an  antecedent  ground  in 
reason,  and  cognisable  by  reason ;  a  ground  which,  when 
known,  gives  all  the  properties  of  the  thing  by  natural 
and  necessary  consequence.  This  Sufficient  Reason  might 
be  some  abstract  property  of  the  thing,  serving  as  the 
pattern  on  which  it  was  constructed,  and  being  the  key 
*  Lectures,  i.  304.  f  Foot-note  to  Reid,  p.  309. 


CONCLUDING   REMARKS.  645 

to  all  its  other  attributes.  Such,  for  example,  is  the  pro- 
perty by  which  mathematicians  define  the  circle  or  the 
triangle,  and  from  which,  by  mere  reasoning,  the  re- 
maining properties  of  those  figures  are  deducible.  In 
other  cases,  the  Sufiicient  Reason  of  a  phaonomenon  is 
found  in  its  physical  cause.  But  the  mere  existence  of 
the  cause  as  an  invariable  antecedent,  does  not  constitute 
it  the  Sufficient  Reason  of  the  effect.  There  must  be 
something  in  the  nature  of  the  cause  itself,  something 
capable  of  being  detected  in  it,  which,  once  known,  ac- 
counts for  its  being  followed  by  that  particular  effect ; 
something  which  explains  the  character  of  the  effect, 
and,  had  it  been  known  beforehand,  would  have  enabled 
us  to  foretel  the  precise  effect  that  would  be  produced. 
To  so  great  a  length  did  Leibnitz  carry  this  doctrine,  as 
to  affirm  that  God  (saving  actual  miracle,  which  as  a 
highly  exceptional  fact  he  was  willing  to  admit)  could 
not,  in  the  exercise  of  his  ordinary  providence,  conduct 
the  government  of  the  world  except  par  la  nature  des 
creatures ;  through  second  causes,  each  containing,  in  its 
own  properties,  wherewithal  to  furnish  a  complete  ex- 
planation of  the  phseoomena  to  which  it  gives  rise. 

Setting  out  with  this  a  priori  Cf^nception  of  the  order 
of  the  u)ii verse,  Leibnitz  found  Mind  apparently  acting 
upon  Matter  and  Matter  upon  Mi)\d,  and  was  utterly 
unable  to  discover  in  the  nature  and  attributes  of  either, 
any  Sufficient  Reason  for  this  action.  The  two  sub- 
stances seemed  wholly  disparate :  there  was  nothing  in 
them  from  which  action  of  any  kind  upon  one  another 
could  have  been  presumed  to  be  so  much  as  possible. 
He  saw  in  this  one  case,  what  is  true,  though  he 
did  not  see  it,  in  all  cases  whatever — that  there  is  no 
newus,  no  natural  link,  between  agent  and  patient,  be- 
tween cause  and  effect,  and  that  all  we  know  or  can 
know  of  their  relation  is,  that  the  one  always  follows  the 
other.  But  to  accept  the  mere  fact  as  ultimate,  without 
craving  for  a  demonstration,  could  not  enter  into  Leib- 
nitz's geometrical  mind  ;  and  was  positively  forbidden  by 
his  Principle  of  Sufficient  Reason.     Here  was  a  dilemma  ! 


646  CONCLUDING   REMARKS. 

Happily,  however,  the  difficulty  of  admitting  that  Mind 
could  act  upon  Matter,  disappeared  in  the  case  of  an 
Infinite  Mind.  In  the  Omnipotence  of  the  Deity  there 
"  lay  a  Sufficient  Eeason  for  the  possibility  of  anything 
which  the  Deity  might  be  pleased  to  do.  It  must  be 
God,  therefore,  and  no  subordinate  agency,  that  directly 
produces  the  effects  on  Matter  which  seem  owing  to 
Mind,  and  the  effects  on  Mind  which  seem  owing  to 
Matter.  This  being  admitted,  there  were  only  two  pos- 
sible theories  to  choose  from.  Either  God,  from  the 
beginning,  wound  up  Mind  and  Matter  to  go  together 
like  two  clocks,  though  without  any  connexion  with  one 
another ;  and  I  see  an  object,  not  because  the  object  is 

'  before  my  eyes,  but  because  it  was  prearranged  from 
eternity  that  the  presence  of  the  object  and  the  fact  of 
my  seeing  should  occur  at  the  same  instant ;  or  else^at 
the  moment  when  the  object  appears,  God  intervenes, 
and  gives  me  the  perception  of  sight,  exactly  as  if  the 
object  had  caused  it.     The  former  theory  is  the  Pre- 

j     established  Harmony  ;  the  latter  is  the  doctrine  of  Occa- 

,  j     sional   Causes,  to  which,   as  rather  the  less  grotesque 

supposition  of  the  two,  the  Cartesians  had  been  driven  by 

I  the  pressure  of  the  same  difficulty.  But  this  hypothesis, 
as  it  supposed  nothing  less  than  a  standing  miracle,  was 
wholly  inadmissible  by  Leibnitz.  It  was  inconsistent 
with  the  idea  which  he  had  formed  to  himself  of  the 
perfections  of  the  Deity.  He  considered  it  as  assimilat- 
ing Providence  to  a  bad  workman,  whose  engines  will 
not  work,  unless  he  himself  stands  by,  and  gives  them  a 
helping  hand ;  "  a  watchmaker,  who,  having  constructed 
"  a  timepiece,  would  still  be  obliged  himself  to  turn  the 
*'  hands,  to  make  it  mark  the  hours."*  Leibnitz  could 
not  find,  in  the  idea  of  God,  any  Sufficient  Eeason  why. 
so  roundabout  a  mode  of  governing  the  universe  should 
have  been  chosen  by  him.  He  was  thus  thrown  upon 
the  hypothesis  of  a  Pre-established  Harmony,  as  his  only  . 
refuge ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  accepted  it, 
with   the  full  conviction  of  an  intellect  accustomed  to 

*  Quoted  from  Leibnitz  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  Lectures,  i.  303. 


CONCLUDING    REMARKS.  647 

pursue  given  premises  to  their  consequences  with  all  the 
rigour  of  geometrical  demonstration. 

The  doctrine  of  Monads  was  as  necessary  a  corol- 
lary from  Leibnitz's  first  principle  as  the  Pre-established 
Harmony.     Everything,  whether  physical  or  spiritual, 
which  has  an  individual   existence,   is  a  compound   of 
innumerable  attributes,  between  many  of  which  we  can- 
not seize  any  connexion,  but  on  Leibnitz's  theory  it  was 
not   admissible  to    suppose   that   no   connexion   exists. 
There  must  be  something,  somewhere,  which  contains  in 
its  own  nature  the  complete  theory  and  explanation  of 
the  combination  of  attributes,  and  is  the  reason  of  its 
being  that  combination  and  no  other :  and  what  could 
this  be  unless  a  sort  of  kernel  of  the  entire  Being — the 
Soul  in  the  case  of  a  spiritual  being,  a  kind  of  Essence 
of  the  Individual  in  that  of  a  merely  physical  object  ? 
The   Monads  of  Leibnitz  do  not  really  differ  from  the 
imaginary  Essences  of  the    schoolmen,   except   in   not 
being  abstractions,  but  objective  realities  in  the  com- 
pletest  meaning  of  the  word ;  which,  indeed,  the  Sub- 
stantise  Secundse  of  the  Realists  already  were,  only  that 
they  were  essences  of  classes,  and  were  conceived  as  in- 
hering simultaneously  in  numerous  individuals,  while  the 
Monads  of  Leibnitz  were  lively  little  beings,  the  principles 
of  animation  and  activity,  each  of  them  the  real  agent 
or  Force  at  the  bottom  of  one  individual.     All  this  may 
seem  poor  stuff,  and  a  melancholy  exhibition  of  a  great 
intellect.     But  as  there  is  nothing  in  experience  which 
directly  disproves  these  theories,  they  are  not  really  more 
absurd  than  many  a  one  which  has  not  so  quaint  an  ap- 
pearance :  and  it  is  the  strength,  not  the  weakness  of  a 
systematic  intellect,  that  it  does  not  shrink  from  conclu- 
sions because  they  have  an  absurd  look,  when  they  are 
necessary  corollaries  from  premises  which   the  thinker, 
and  probably  most  of  those  who  criticise  him,  have  not 
ceased  to  regard  as  true.     Leibnitz  was  led  to  the  Monads 
and  the  Pre-established  Harmony  by  the  same  logical  ne- 
cessity, which  made  Descartes,  far  more  absurdly,  aflfirm 
the  automatism  of  animals ;  and  we  might  as  reasonably 


648  CONCLUDING    REMARKS. 

doubt  the  seriousness  of  the  latter  opinion,  as  of  the 
former.  The  same  logical  consistency  made  him  a  Neces- 
sitarian, and  an  Optimist ;  since  the  doctrine  of  Sufficient 
Reason  made  Grod  the  author  of  all  that  happens,  conse- 
quently of  all  human  actions  ;  and  God's  attributes  could 
not  be  a  Sufficient  Reason  for  any  world  but  the  best 
possible. 

Other  examples  may  be  given,  though  none  greater 
than  this,  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  inability  to  enter  into 
the  very  mind  of  another  thinker.  Is  it  not,  for  instance, 
a  surprising  thing,  that  one  who  knew  Socrates,  Plato, 
and  Aristotle  so  well,  should  attribute*  to  all  of  them  his 
own  opinion  that  (at  least  in  the  case  of  speculative 
knowledge)  not  truth  but  the  search  for  truth  is  the 
important  matter,  and  that  the  pursuit  of  it  is  not  for 
the  sake  of  the  attainment,  but  of  the  mental  activity 
and  energy  developed  in  the  search  ?t  If  there  have 
been  three  men  since  speculation  began  who  would  have 
vehemently  rejected  such  a  doctrine,  they  are  the  three 
who  are  here  placed  at  the  head  of  the  authorities  in  its 
support.  Our  author  arrives  at  this  strange  misunder- 
standing, by  giving  a  meaning  to  single  expressions, 
derived  from  his  own  mode  of  thought  and  not  from 
theirs.  In  Aristotle's  case  the  assertion  rests  on  a  mis- 
take of  the  meaning  of  the  Aristotelian  word  ivipyeia, 
which  did  not  signify  energy,  but  fact  as  opposed  to  possi- 
bility, actus  to  potentia.  I  One  hardly  knows  what  to  say 
to  a  writer  who  understands  TeXoq  ov  yvuxrig  aXXa  irpa^iQ^ 
to  mean,  "  The  intellect  is  perfected  not  by  knowledge 
but  by  activity."  § 

*  Lectures,  i.  11, 12. 

f  "  Speculative  truth  is  only  pursued  and  held  of  value  for  the  sake  of 
intellectual  activity"  (Lectures,  i.  7),  and  again  (at  p.  13)  "  speculative 
truth"  is  said  to  be  "  only  valuable  as  a  mean  of  intellectual  activity." 

X  The  very  passage  quoted  from  Aristotle  by  the  editors  in  support  of 
this  representation  of  him,  shows  that  he  was  using  the  word  in  his  own 
and  not  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  sense.  TeXos  8'  f)  Ivspy^ia,  koI  rovrov  xop'"  i? 
bvvafiis  Xafx^dveTai  ....  Koi  ttji/  deapijTiK^v  {e)(ovon')  Iva  dfcopaaiv'  aXX'  ov 
dfoipoMriv  Iva  dfcopqriKTjv  €^aoti>. 

§  Professor  Veitch,  in  the  third  Appendix  to  his  Memoir  of  Sir  W. 
Hamilton,  points  out  that  in  this  last  sentence  I  have  done  Sir  "W.  Hamil- 
ton an  injustice.   The  passage,  TiXos  ov  yvS>ais  dXKa  npa^is,  was  not  quoted 


CONCLUDING   REMARKS.  '649 

We  see,  from  such  instances,  how  much  even  Sir 
W.  Hamilton's  erudition  wanted  of  what  we  have  a 
right  to  expect  from  erudition  in  a  superior  mind — that 
it  should  enter  into  the  general  spirit  of  the  things 
it  knows,  not  know  them  merely  in  their  details.  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  studied  the  eminent  thinkers  of  old,  only 
from  the  outside.  He  did  not  throw  his  own  mind  into 
their  manner  of  thought ;  he  did  not  survey  the  field  of 
l)hilosophic  speculation  from  their  standing  point,  and 
see  each  object  as  it  would  be  seen  with  their  lights,  and 
with  their  modes  of  looking.  The  opinion  of  an  author 
stands  an  isolated  fact  in  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  pages,  with- 
out foundation  in  the  author's  individuality,  or  connexion 
with  his  other  doctrines.  For  want  of  this  elucidation 
one  by  another,  even  the  opinions  themselves  are,  as  in 
the  case  last  cited,  very  liable  to  be  misunderstood.  A 
history  of  philosophy  from  his  hand,  unless  proposing  to 
himself  a  new  object  had  altered  his  point  of  view,  could 
not  have  been  final ;  it  would  not  have  been  a  philoso- 
phical history  of  philosophy;  but  it  would  have  stood  in 
the  same  relation  to  such  a  work,  in  which  accurate  and 
complete  annals  stand  to  political  history:  it  would  have 
been  an  invaluable  protection  against  the  mistakes  of  sub- 
sequent historians,  and  would  have  prodigiously  abridged 
their  labours.  Such,  therefore,  as  his  expositions  of  the 
opinions  of  philosophers  are,  it  is  greatly  to  be  regretted 
that  we  have  not  more  of  them ;  and  that  his  unrivalled 
knowledge  of  all  the  antecedents  of  Philosophy  has  en- 
riched the  world  with  nothing  but  a  few  selections  of 
passages  on  topics  on  which  circumstances  had  led  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  to  write.  He  is  known  to  have  left  copious 
common- place  books,  without  which  indeed  it  would  have 
been  hardly  possible  that  such  stores  of  knowledge  could 
be  kept  within  easy  reference.  Let  us  hope  that  they 
are  carefully  preserved ;  that  they  will,  in  some  form  or 

by  himself,  but  by  his  editors,  as  the  nearest  they  had  found  to  a  justifica- 
tion of  the  statement  that  Aristotle  held  the  opinion  attributed  to  him  in 
the  text.  They  would  have  done  more  wisely  by  making  no  reference, 
than  one  which  so  totally  fails  to  support  the  iuference  drawn  from  it. 

V   V 


650  CONCLUDING    REMARKS. 

other,  be  made  accessible  to  students,  and  will  yet  do 
good  service  to  the  future  historian  of  philosophy. 
Should  this  hope  be  fulfilled,  future  ages  will  have  greater 
cause  than,  T  think,  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  published  philo- 
sophical speculations  will  ever  give  them,  to  rejoice  in 
the  fruits  of  his  labours,  and  to  celebrate  his  name. 


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History  of   England   in 

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The  History  of  England 

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INDEX. 


Abbey  &=  Overton's  English  Church  Histour  15 

—'s  Photography  u 

Acton's  Modem  Cookery 21 

Alpine  Club  Map  of  Switzerland  18 

Alpine  Guide  (The) 18 

Amos' s  TanspTudence  S 

Primer  of  the  Constitution S 

Anderson's  Strength  of  Materials 11 

Armstrong' s  Orgamc  CheraisXry  11 

Arnold's  (Dr.)  Lectures  on  Modem  History  2 

Miscellaneous  Works    7 

Sermons  15 

(T.)  English  Literature 7 

Arnott's  Elements  of  Physics 10 

Atelier  (The)  du  Lys    19 

Atherstone  Priory 19 

Autumn  Holidays  of  a  Country  Parson  ...  7 

Ayre's  Treasury  of  Bible  Knowledge  21 

Bacon' s  "Esss-YS,  hy  Abbott  6 

.            by   Whately 6 

Life  and  Letters,  by  Shedding   ...  S 

Works 5 

Bagehot's  Literary  Studies 7 

Bailey's  Festus,  a  Poem 19 

Bain's  Mental  and  Moral  Science 6 

on  the  Senses  and  Intellect   6 

Emotions  and  Will 6 

Baker's  Two  Works  on  Ceylon 17 

^a/A  Alpine  Guides   18 

^arry  on  Railway  Appliances   11 

i9^a:ti7»j/?^/c?'j  (Lord)  Novels  and  Tales   ...  18 

Beesly's  Gracchi,  Marius,  and  Sulla 3 

Bent's  Republic  of  San  Marino 17 

Black's  Treatise  on  Brewing  21 

Blackley's  German- English  Dictionary 8 

Blaine's  Rural  Sports 20 

Bloxam's  Metals   n 

Bolland  and  Lang's  Aristotle's  Politics 6 

Boultbee  on  39  Articles 15 

's  History  of  the  English  Church...  15 

^Bourne's  Works  on  the  Steam  Engine 14 

Bowdler's  Family  Shakespeare  19 

Bramley-Moore  s  Six  Sisters  of  the  Valleys .  1 9 
Brandt! s  Dictionary  of  Science,  Literature, 

and  Art   12 

Brassey's  Voyage  of  the  Sunbeam   17 

Brian  Boru,  a  Tragedy 19 

Browne's  Exposition  of  the  39  Articles 15 

Browning' s  iAoA.era.'Englz.nd    3 

Buckle's  History  of  Civilisation 2 

— ^—  Posthumous  Remains 7 

Buckton's  Food  and  Home  Cookery 21 

J"' —  Health  in  the  House 13 

Town  and  Window  Gardening...  12 

BulTs  Hints  to  Mothers 21 

Maternal  Management  of  Children.  21 

Bullinger's  Lexicon  to  the  Greek  Testa- 
ment      8 

Burgomaster's  Family  (The)  19 

Burkes  Vicissitudes  of  Families 4 

Cabinet  Lawyer 21 

Capes' s  Age  of  the  Antonines 3 

Early  Roman  Empire    3 

•Cay&y^  Iliad  of  Homer 19 

Changed  Aspects  of  Unchanged  Tmths  ...  7 


Chesney's  Indian  Polity   2 

Waterloo  Campaign  2 

Church's  Beginning  of  the  Middle  Ages ...  3 

Colenso  on  Moabite  Stone  &c 17 

's  Pentateuch  and  Book  of  Joshua.  17 

Commonplace  Philosopher 7 

Comte's  Positive  Polity    S 

Congreve's  Politics  of  Aristotle  6 

Conington's  Translation  of  Virgil's  Mt\q\6.  19 

Miscellaneous  Writings 6 

Contanseau's  Two  French  Dictionaries  ...  8 

Conybeare  and  Howson's  St.  Paul 16 

Cooper's  Tales  from  Euripides   18 

Cordery's  Stmggle  against  Absolute  Mon- 
archy    3 

Cotta  on  Rocks,  by  Lawrence    12 

Counsel  and  Comfort  from  a  City  Pulpit...  7 

Cox's  (G.  W.)  Athenian  Empire   3 

Crusades 3 

.                         Greeks  and  Persians 3 

Creighton's  Age  of  Elizabeth 3 

England  a  Continental  Power  3 

Shilling  History  of  England  ...  3 

Tudors  and  the  Reformation  3 

Cresy's  Encyclopaedia  of  Civil  Engineering  14 

Critical  Essays  of  a  Country  Parson 7 

Crookes's  Anthracen 15 

Chemical  Analyses 13 

Dyeing  and  Calico-printing    15 

Crump''s  Manual  of  Banking 21 

Culley's  Handbook  of  Telegraphy 14 

Curteis's  Macedonian  Empire 3 

De  Caisne  and  Le  Maout's  Botany 12 

De  Tocqueville' s  Democracy  in  America...  5 

Digby's  Indian  Famine  Campaign    2 

Dobson  on  the  Ox 20 

Dove's  Law  of  Storms 9 

ZJow^Z/j  History  of  Taxes  .• 5 

Doyle's  i^.)  Fairyland 13 

Drew's  Hulsean  Lectures   15 

Z>^«»«»«o«cf^  Jewish  Messiah  16 

Eastlake's  Hints  on  Household  Taste 14 

Edwards's  Nile 17 

£//«Vo«'j  Scripture  Commentaries  16 

Lectures  on  Life  of  Christ  15 

Elsa  and  her  Vulture   19 

Epochs  of  Ancient  History 3 

English  History    3 

Modern  History 3 

Ewalds  History  of  Israel  16 

Antiquities  of  Israel 16 

.Fa:»>^a?r«'j  Applications  of  Iron 14 

■ Information  for  Engineers 14 

Mills  and  Millwork 14 

Farrar's  Language  and  Languages 7 

Fitzwygram  on  Horses  and  Stables 20 

Frampton's  (Bishop)  Life    ; 4 

Francis's  Fishing  Book   20 

Frobisher's  lAiehy  Jones 4 

Froude's  Caesar 4 

English  in  Ireland    i 

History  of  England  i 

Short  Studies 7 

Gairdner's  Houses  of  Lancaster  and  York  3 
Richard  1 1 1 .  &  Perkin  Warbeck  2 


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Ga«o/'j  Elementary  Physics   10 

■  Natural  Philosophy  10 

Gardiner's  Buckingham  and  Charles  2 

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'             First  Two  Stuarts    3 

Thirty  Years' War 3 

Gennan  Home  Life 7 

Geldziher's  Hebrew  Mythology 16 

Goodeve's  Mechanics 11 

Mechanism  11 

Gore's  Art  of  Scientific  Discovery 14 

Electro-Metallurgy 11 

Grant's  Ethics  of  "Aristotle 6 

Graver  Thoughts  of  a  Coimtry  Parson 7 

Greville' s  '^OMmal i 

Griffin's  Algebra  and  Trigonometry ii 

Grove  on  Correlation  of  Physical  Forces...  10 

Gwilt's  Encyclopaedia  of  Architecture 14 

//iz/if'j  Fall  of  the  Stuarts 3 

Hartvoi^s  Works  on  Natural  History  and 

Popular  Science    11 

Haughton' s  Animal  Mechanics 10 

//aj'warrf'i  Selected  Essays    6 

Heer's  Primeval  World  of  Switzerland 12 

Heine's  Life  and  Works,  by  Stigand   4 

Helmholtz  on  Tone 10 

Helmholiz's  Scientific  Lectures 10 

HerscheTs  Outlines  of  Astronomy 9 

Hobson's  Amateur  Mechanic 14 

Hodgson's  Philosophy  of  Reflection S 

Hopkins's  Christ  the  Consoler   17 

Hoskold's  Engineer's  Valuing  Assistant  ...  14 

HuUah's  History  of  Modem  Music    12 

Transition  Period   12 

Hume'sKssays  6 

Treatise  on  Human  Nature 6 

/Ane's  Rome  to  its  Capture 3 

History  of  Rome  ....• 2 

Indian  Alps   17 

Ingelow's  Poems   19 

Jameson's  Sacred  and  Legendary  Art 13 

Memoirs 4 

Jenkins  Electricity. and  Magnetism ii 

Jerrold's  Life  of  Napoleon i 

Johnson's  Normans  in  Europe  3 

Patentee's  Manual 21 

Johnston's  Geographical  Dictionary 8 

Jonson's  (Ben)  Every  Man  in  his  Humour  6 

Jukes's  Types  of  Genesis  16 

Jukes  on  Second  Death 16 

Aa/wA'j  Bible  Studies  16 

—  Commentary  on  the  Bible 16 

Keller's  Lake  Dwellings  of  Switzerland....  12 

Kerts  Metallurgy,  by  Crookes  and  Rohrig.  15 

Kingzetts  Alkali  Trade  13 

Animal  Chemistry 13 

Kirby  and  S fence's  Entomology  12 

Knatchbull-Hugesseri s  Fairy-Land  18 

Higgledy-Piggledy  18 

Kuenen's  Prophets  and  Prophecy  in  Israel  16 

Landscapes,  Churches,  &c 7 

Latham's  English  Dictionaries  8 

Handbook  of  English  Language  8 

Lecky's  History  of  England i 

European  Morals 3 

— Rationalism  3 

.^—  Leaders  of  Public  Opinion 4 

Lefroy's  Bermudas    17 

Leisure  Hours  in  Town  7 


Leslies   Essays   in   Political    and    Moral 

Philosophy  6 

Lessons  of  Middle  Age    7 

Lewes' s  Biographical  History  of  Philosophy  3 

Z«t/M  on  Authority  6 

Liddellaxid  Scott's  Greek-English  Lexicons  8 

Lindley  and  Moore's  Treasury  of  Botany  ...  21 

Lloyd's  Magnetism  10 

Wave-Theory  of  Light 10 

London  Series  of  English  Classics   6 

Longman's  (F.  W.)  Chess  Openings 21 

German  Dictionary  ...  8 

(W.)  Edward  the  Third 2 

Lectures  on  History  of  England  s 

1 Old  and  New  St.  Paul's  13 

Loudon's  Encyclopaedia  of  Agricultiure  ...  15 

Gardening 15 

Plants.- 12 

Lubbock's  Origin  of  Civilisation 12 

Z«rf/ira/'j  American  War 3 

L)rra  Germanica    17 

A/aca/w/^r'j  Vertebrate  Animals    11 

Macaulay's  (Lord)  Clive,  hy  Bowen 6 

Essays  1 

History  of  England  ...  i 

Lays,  Illus.  Editions ...  13 

■  Cheap  Edition...  19 

Life  and  Letters 4 

Miscellaneous  Writings  7 

Speeches  7 

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McCullocKs  Dictionary  of  Commerce 8 

Macfarren  on  Musical  Harmony 13 

Macleodls  Economical  Philosophy 5 

Economics  for  Beginners 21 

Theory  and  Practice  of  Banking  2X 

Elements  of  Banking 31 

Mademoiselle  Mori 19 

A/a/(f/'i  Annals  of  the  Road  19 

Mannings  Mission  of  the  Holy  Spirit 17 

Marlowe's  Doctor  Faustus,  by  Wagner  ...  6 

Marshman' s  IJie  oi  HsM^ock.   4 

Martineau' s  Chnslian  Life 17 

Hours  of  Thought 17 

Hymns 17 

Maunders  Popular  Treasuries 30 

Maxweirs  Theory  of  Heat xx 

May's  History  of  Democracy i 

History  of  England  i 

Melville's  (Whyte)  Novels  and  Tales  19 

Memorials  of  Charlotte  Williams- Wynn  4 

Mendelssohn's  letters  4 

Merivale's  Early  Church  History 15 

Fall  of  the  Roman  Republic  ...  2 

General  History  of  Rome  2 

Roman  Triumvirates 3 

Romans  under  the  Empire 3 

Merridelds  Arithmetic  and  Mensuration...  11 

Miles  on  Horse's  Foot  and  Horse  Shoeing  20 

on  Horse's  Teeth  and  Stables 30 

Mill  (J.)  on  the  Mind 5 

MilfslJ.  S.)  Autobiography 4 

Dissertations  &  Discussions  5 

Essays  on  Religion 16 

Hamilton's  Philosophy  5 

. Liberty  5 

Political  Economy  5 

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Inorganic  Chemistry 11 

&=  Skertchley's  Fenland    18 

Mitchell's  Manual  of  Assaying 15 

Milton's  Paradise  Regained,  by  Jerram ...  6 

Modem  Novelist's  Library  18-19 

Af(?«j^//'j  Spiritual  Songs 17 

Moore's  Irish  Melodies,  Illustrated  Edition  13 

Lalla  Rookh,  Illustrated  Edition..  13 

MorelTs  Philosophical  Fragments 5 

Morris' s  Age  of  Anne 3 

Mozart's  Life,  by   Nohl 4 

Mailer's  Chips  from  a  German  Workshop.  7 

Hibbert  Lectures  on  Religion  ...  16 

Science  of  Language  7 

Science  of  Religion 16 

Mullinger's  Schools  of  Charles  the  Great ...  6 

Neison  on  the  Moon g 

'  A'iwi/u'j  Horses  and  Riding 20 

Newmans  Apologia  pro  Vita  Su9, 4 

Nicols's  Puzzle  of  Life 12 

Noirfs  Miiller  &  Philosophy  of  Language  7 

Northcott's  Lathes  &  Turning    14 

O' Conor's  Scripture  Commentary 16 

Owen's  Comparative  Anatomy  and  Phy- 
siology of  Vertebrate  Animals    II 

Packe's  Guide  to  the  Pyrenees   18 

Pattison's  Casaubon 4 

Payen's  Industrial  Chemistry 14 

Pewtner's  Comprehensive  Specifier  21 

/"A/Z/ii^yj  Civil  War  in  Wales    2 

Pole's  Game  of  Whist 21 

Popes  Select  Poems,  by  Arnold  6 

PoweUs  Early  England 3 

Preece  &  Sivewright's  Telegraphy 11 

Present-Day  Thoughts 7 

Proctor's  Astronomical  Works   g 

Scientific  Essays  (Two  Series)  ...  11 

Prothero's  De  Montfort  2 

Public  Schools  Atlas  of  Ancient  Geography  8 

Atlas  of  Modern  Geography  8 

Rawlinson' s  Parthia 3 

Sassanians  3 

Recreations  of  a  Country  Parson 7 

Reynardson's  Down  the  Road    19 

Rich's  Dictionary  of  Antiquities    8 

Rivers' s  Orchard  House 12 

Rose  Amateur's  Guide 12 

Rogers's  Eclipse  of  Faith 15 

Defence  of  Eclipse  of  Faith    15 

Roget's  English  Thesaurus 8 

Ronalds'  Fly-Fisher's  Entomology    20 

/Pcnt'/^yj  Rise  of  the  People   3 

Settlement  of  the  Constitution  ...  3 

Rutley's  Study  of  Rocks 11 

.Sawrfar/i  Justinian's  Institutes 5 

5a«-6£yj  Sparta  and  Thebes  3 

Schellen's  Spectrum  Analysis g 

Seaside  Musings  7 

Scott's  Farm  Valuer 21 

Seebohm's  Oxford  Reformers  of  1498 2 

Seebohm't  Protestant  Revolution   3 


Sewelts  History  of  France 2 

Passing  Thoughts  on  Religion  ...  i6 

Preparation  for  Communion  17 

Stories  and  Tales  18 

Thoughts  for  the  Age  17 

Shelley's  Workshop  Appliances ii 

Short's  Church  History   15 

Smith's  [Sydney)  Wit  and  Wisdom 7 

(Dr.  R.  A.)  Air  and  Rain 9 

(R.  B.)Carthage&  the  Carthaginians  2 

Southey's  Poetical  Works 19 

Stanley's  History  of  British  Birds 12 

Stephen's  Ecclesiastical  Biography 4 

Stonehenge,  Dog  and  Greyhound 20 

Stoney  on  Strains 14 

5/«Wj'j  Early  Plantagenets    ,...  3 

Sunday  Afternoons,  by  A.  K.  H.B 7 

Supernatural  Religion 16 

Swinbourne's  Picture  Logic  6 

Taucock's    England    during     the    Wars, 

1778-1820  3 

Taylor's  History  of  India    2 

Ancient  and  Modern  History  ...  3 

{Jeremy')  Works,  edited  by  Eden  17 

Text-Books  of  Science 11 

Thomi's  Botany  11- 

Thomson's  Laws  of  Thought 6 

Thorpe's  Quantitative  Analysis  11 

Thorpe  and  Muir's  Qualitative  Analysis  ...  ii 

Tilden's  Chemical  Philosophy  ii 

Todd  on  Parliamentary  Government 2 

Trench' s  R.e2i\\t\es  oi  Irish  Life 7 

Trollope's  Warden  and  Barchester  Towers  19 

Twiss's  Law  of  Nations 5 

TJ'w^a//' .5  (Professor)  Scientific  Works   ...  10 

Unawares  19 

Unwin's  Machine  Design  11 

Lire's  Arts,  Manufactures,  and  Mines 14 

l^ille  on  Artificial  Manures 15 

Walker  on  Whist 21 

Walpoles  History  of  England  i 

Warburton's  Edward  the  Third    3 

Watson's  Geometery    11 

Watts' s  Dictionary  of  Chemistry 13 

Weinhold' s  Experimental  Physics 10 

Wellington  s  Life,  by  Gleig  4 

^FAa^^/y'j  English  Synonymes 8 

Logic    6 

Rhetoric  6 

White's  Four  Gospels  in  Greek 16 

and  Riddle's  Latin  Dictionaries    ...  8 

Wilcocks's  Sea-Fisherman  20 

Williams's  Ax\%\.oX\€%  Ethics 6 

H^«7&A'j  Popular  Tables   21 

Wilson  s  Resources  of  Modern  Countries...  21 
Wood^s  (J.  G.)  Popular  Works  on  Natural 

History  11 

(J.  T.)  Ephesus   17 

Woodward' s  Qe.o\o%y 12 

Yonge's  English-Greek  Lexicons   8 

Horace 19 

Fi?«a:^/ on  the  Dog  20 

on  the  Horse    20 

Zeller's  Plato,  Socrates,  &c 3 

Zitnmern's  Lessing  4 


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